Kalas Funeral Home & Crematory

Kalas Funeral Home & Crematory-Edgewater

 John Paul (Jack) Elberti, a resident of Edgewater, MD and Vienna, VA, passed away peacefully on July 2, 2021 from metastatic cancer. Jack was born on May 24, 1933 in Minersville, PA to Marion & Paul Elberti and attended the Minersville school system until his graduation from Minersville High School where he served as captain of the football team. His father, Paul, was a chemistry teacher and football coach at Minersville High School and his mother, Marion, was a dedicated homemaker and devoted family caregiver. Jack’s maternal grandfather, Reverend J.C. H. Light, was a United Brethren minister in Lititz, PA. Jack played on the Minersville High School football team, the ‘Battling Miners,’ throughout his four years of high school and helped lead them to victory in the 1949 Eastern Conference Championship.

Jack received a football scholarship to Lafayette College in Easton, PA where he served on the varsity football team for four years. He graduated from Lafayette in 1955 with a bachelors degree in geology. He was then hired by a mining and exploration company located in Albuquerque, New Mexico tasked with searching for gold and silver deposits in Colorado and for uranium deposits in New Mexico. Recalled for military duty he served brief military tours in the Army at Fort Benning, Georgia and Fort Knox, Kentucky. In 1957, he married his high school sweetheart, Charlotte Burcheck, also a Minersville resident. In 1958, he and Charlotte moved to Denver, Colorado to both work for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) developing topographic maps. In 1960, they were transferred to Arlington, VA to continue work for the USGS.

In 1963, Jack was hired by the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), a former office within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involved in exploiting and analyzing satellite imagery. At NPIC, he was selected for an academic sabbatical to the University of Illinois, where he received a Master of Science in Photogrammetry. He served with NPIC/CIA for approximately thirty-four years, achieving positions of increasing leadership responsibility and was admitted into the Senior Intelligence Service. In his final two years with CIA, he served as a grievance officer for the Directorate of Science and Technology. His wife Charlotte passed in 2001. His only sibling, Mary Ann Aagaard, passed away in 2002.

In 2009, Jack was remarried to Sophia Lynn Hicks and they shared a residence in Vienna VA. Jack is survived by his wife Sophia; daughter Jane Elberti of Edgewater MD; son David Elberti and his wife, Patricia, of Edgewater, MD; granddaughter Katharina Elberti of Chicago, Illinois; sister-in-law Joan Jenkins of Riva, MD; brother-in-law Stanley Aagaard of Venice, FL; and his beloved nieces and nephews. A much beloved husband, father, grandfather (Bop), and uncle…and cherished friend to many, he will live in our hearts forever and will long be remembered for his beautiful smile and infectious sense of humor and playfulness, including his rascally practical jokes. Thank you, Jack, for spreading so much joy and laughter to all of us. We love you so much!

A “celebration of life” ceremony will be held in Jack’s honor in the coming months, to be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the <a href="https://donations.ata.org/donate?utm_source=ata-website-donate">American Tinnitus Association.</a>

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John Paul Elberti

John Paul Elberti

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