Donald Peter Moriarty II

Lieutenant Colonel Donald Peter Moriarty, II, US Army, retired, was born in Alexandria, Louisiana. He passed from this life on February 4, 2018 at the age of 83. Pete was a graduate of Louisiana State University, from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and a US Army lieutenant’s commission in 1957. He was married to the late Fleurette Antoinette Aucoin while at the university in 1956; two children, Erin and Donald (III) were born of this marriage.

Entering active army service, he went on to serve his nation for the next 23 years. His military service began with two years at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, IN, then took him to the far reaches of Aroostook County, Maine for three years. From there, it was on to

Germany for a total of seven years; and to the Eastern NORAD Region at Newburgh, New York for three years. He served as a member of the Division Artillery Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam, and later as Operations Officer of the Advisor School, US Army, Vietnam, training US soldiers to be members of the Mobile Advisor Teams (MATs) throughout South Vietnam. He subsequently transferred to Palm Beach County, Florida, where he served as Regular Army Advisor to the 1st Battalion, 265th Air Defense Artillery of the Florida National Guard. During this two-year posting, he also attended Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton, from which he earned a Master of Arts in History in 1973. His final four years were spent at the Army Air Defense Center, Fort Bliss, Texas as Head of the Command Control & Integration Department of the Combat Developments Directorate. From this position, he was ex officio the US Army representative to two consultative working groups at Headquarters NATO, Brussels, Belgium, responsible for the development of the military tactics and doctrine common to all NATO nations. He retired from active military service in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of Artillery at Fort Bliss in November 1980.

Pete then began the second phase of his professional career, moving to Southern California to accept employment with the Hughes Electronics Corporation’s Ground Systems Group in Fullerton. Shortly thereafter, he was married to the former Diana Mary Blackburn of Sussex, England, whom he had met shortly after arrival in Southern California, and through whom he inherited two additional teenage daughters, Wendy and Joanna. Beginning at Hughes as a Staff Engineer and a specialist in Command Control and Systems Integration, he soon worked his way up to Systems Engineer, to Department Manager for Integrated Systems, and later to Engineering Program Manager. In this capacity, he served as systems engineer for the development of a national air defense system for the Kingdom of Jordan, to include a six-month residency in that country; as Project Manager for the development of an Integrated Air Defense Systems Test Bed for the US Army Ballistic Missile Defense Systems Command at Huntsville, Alabama; and later as Project Manager for a comprehensive Theater Air Defense Architecture Study for that same agency. By that time, President Reagan had announced the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (“Star Wars”) program, which was to prove so pivotal to ending the Cold War that had existed between the USA and the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. Hughes undertook an extensive total involvement in this program, and Pete soon was deeply involved in the Battle Management, Command Control & Communications portion of this systems development, with extensive residences in Washington, DC. He retired from this phase of his career in December 1995, after fifteen years service with Hughes.

In retirement, Pete became National President of the Episcopal Synod of America, an organization of some 15,000 members of the Episcopal Church, which position he held from 1993 to 1998. He and Diana found time to spend extensive periods at Diana’s home in Northamptonshire, England, during which Pete was able to undertake two summers in independent studies at Keble College of Oxford University in the field of Patristics (the writings of the Fathers of the Christian Church), a particular field of personal interest. For many years Pete had worked extensively in the field of genealogy, and now he began to publish a number of articles on the colonial history of Louisiana and on his family lineage, two areas of deep personal interest. This led to a decade of research, to include residence in his boyhood home of Louisiana between 1998 and 2009, that culminated in the publication of a book, “A Fine Body of Men – the Orleans Light Horse, Louisiana Cavalry, 1861-65”. This publication was released in October 2014 by the Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans. During this phase, he found time to stand for election to the Republican State Central Committee in Louisiana, from which he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, MN in 2008. A major element of Pete’s credo was to the effect that “a man should endeavor to accomplish four things in life: build a home; have a son; write a book; plant a tree.” He had now accomplished all four of these items, in addition to two successful professional careers plus a brief foray into Republican electoral politics, and so the pace of his life after 2015 began to show a gradual lessening of civic involvements, focusing increasingly on his family in Southern California, to which he had returned in 2009.

He is survived by his wife, Diana, their four children, Erin, Donald (III) (& Danielle), Wendy (& Scott) and Joanna (& David); and four grandchildren.

He will be buried with full military honors from Saint Norbert Catholic Church, Orange, with interment in the Field of Valor of the Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana.