CAPTAIN JOSEPH F. GUSTAFERRO
DECEMBER 1954 - DECEMBER 1956
Biography
Captain Joseph F. Gustaferro

Joseph F. Gustaferro, 82, a retired Navy captain and World War II Veteran who after his military career published an energy forecasting report for the Commerce Department, died Dec. 22 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He had amytrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Captain Gustaferro, a Fairfax resident for 44 years was a native of Conneaut, Ohio and an electrical engineering graduate of Ohio State University. He received a masters degree in Bio-Radiology from the University of California at Berkeley and a masters degree in International Affairs from George Washington University

He also graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey CA, and the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

He was commissioned in the Navy upon his graduation from Ohio State and ordered to Pearl Harbor, where he survived the Japanese attack Dec. 7, 1941. He then served on destroyers and participated in operations from Guadalcanal to the carrier air raids on Japan.

He fought in the Korean war where he commanded a fleet oil tanker and served on the staff of the chief of naval operations.

Captain Gustaferro commanded the USS Floyd B. Parks from December of 1954 to December of 1956.

After his retirement from active military duty in 1965, he worked the next nine years as general manager and president of defense contractor Computer Command and Control Company in
Washington.

From 1974 to 1985, he worked for the Commerce Department as publisher of "Energy for the Rest of the Century," a report analyzing energy consumption.

He was a chapter president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and an active member of the National War College Alumni Association.

His wife, Frances C. Gustaferro, died in 1998.

Survivors include two children, Barbara Ricbert of Littleton, CO and Richard Gustaferro of Scottsdale, Ariz.; two brothers, ,and three granddaughters.