John Iseman Cumberland, Jr.

John Iseman Cumberland, Jr. died on June 15, 2017 at the age of 95. He was a native of Washington, D.C. son of John Iseman Cumberland, Sr. and Opal Hotson Cumberland. He grew up in the Brookland neighborhood, attending John Burroughs Elementary School and McKinley Technology High School where he was a High School Cadet and played center on the football team. He was an Eagle Scout and served papers for the Washington Star and the Washington Post as a teenager. He attended the University of Maryland where he completed one year of freshman engineering before entering the Naval Academy on July 5, 1940 in the class of 1944. On June 9, 1943 he graduated and was commissioned in the war-shortened class, and married Helen Marie Goldupp. During WWII he served on three destroyers as an engineering officer and a gunnery officer. He was officer of the deck on the Bristol when it joined the Pacific Fleet in Tokyo Bay for the surrender He resigned his commission in 1947 as Lieutenant and began a civilian career with General Electric where he worked in Steam Turbine research and design. In 1950 he began his Civil Service career at the Naval Ordinance Lab in Silver Springs, MD leading a in design section in electro mechanical timing devices for underwater mines. He moved to the Naval Ordinance Unit in Key West, FL to work on the Mark 44 torpedo. In 1957 he was awarded a Sloan Fellowship representing the US Navy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned an MS degree in systems engineering. He moved to Annandale, VA to support space exploration at NASA, and then to Rome, Italy to support ordinance development for NATO. He returned to Bethesda, MD to work at the Pentagon before working at the Naval Training Devices Center in Orlando, where he retired in 1973.He was married to Marie Cumberland for 53 years. They had three children, John, Linda, and Sharon. In retirement he married Ruth Anne Parry of Bloomington, IN. who died in 2014. He moved to Seattle, WA and is survived by son John Cumberland (Susan), granddaughter Catherine Bauer (James) and great-grandchildren Clara and Jasper Bauer in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; Linda Cumberland, Sharon Cumberland Jones (James), granddaughter Laura Simpson James (Paul), great-grandchildren Kyle, Aaron, and Ashley James in Seattle; grandson Robert K. Simpson (Sarah) and great-granddaughters Hannah and Ella in Athens, GA; step-daughter Joni Parry Carter (Lester) and step-grandson Garret in Bloomington, IN.A Funeral Mass will be held in the St. Andrew Chapel at the Naval Academy on at 10:30 July 28, 2017. His ashes will be committed with military honors in the Naval Academy Columbarium, joining those of his wife Marie Cumberland.