Jon Alvin Peterka

Jon was born May 26, 1941 in Knoxville, Tennessee to Alvin Joseph Peterka and Ruth Marion (Steindorf) Peterka where his father was a hydraulic engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority, Norris, Tennessee. In 1946 they moved to Lakewood, CO, where Alvin was head of the Hydraulic Laboratory of the Bureau of Reclamation in Lakewood.

Jon graduated from Lakewood High School in 1959, received his BS in 1964 and MS in 1965 in Civil Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU), and his Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics from Brown University in 1968.

Jon married Pamela Jane Rasor on December 28, 1964. Their daughter Elizabeth Eylene was born in 1969 in Huntsville, AL, and their son James Alvin was born in Fort Collins, CO in 1972.

Jon served on active duty with the US Army Ordnance Corp. at the US Army Missile Command in Huntsville, AL from 1968 to 1970, retiring as Captain, followed by a partial year as a civilian employee of the Army Missile Command. He acted as an aerospace engineer developing the Lance Missile System and performed research for development of liquid rocket propulsion.

Jon joined the Civil Engineering Department at CSU as a professor in 1971. In 1977 he received the Honors Prof Award and retired as a professor in 1995. His research and contract activities revolved around wind engineering, including testing of small scale models in a boundary layer wind tunnel capable of simulating atmospheric winds at model scale.

He was particularly active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). From 1985 until 2015 Jon served on the ASCE committee that wrote the wind load provisions of ASCE Standard 7, which forms the basis for most local building codes in the Unites States. As part of this activity, he performed research at CSU that changed the basis for the design wind map to a peak gust speed. For this research he was awarded the Raymond C. Reese Prize in 1999, one of the most prestigious awards given by ASCE. In 2017, the Structural Engineers Association of Colorado granted Jon honorary membership for outstanding service to the profession of structural engineering. He was only the third person to receive this award.

Additional awards include: ASCE 1989 Aerospace Science and Technology Award; Wind Engineering Research Council 1990 Outstanding Wind Engineering Research Award; Engineering News Record Top 25 Newsmakers of 2006 Award; American Society of Civil Engineers 2010 Cermak Medal; and was a Fellow of both ASCE and the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE.

In 1981, Jon co-founded the first wind engineering consulting firm in the US with Dr. Jack Cermak, adding Dr. Ron Petersen in 1984. The firm was Cermak Peterka Petersen, Inc. (CPP, Inc.), which performed wind tunnel tests for buildings under design around the world, and included an office and wind tunnel in Sydney, Australia. He retired from CPP in 2014, continuing as a consultant until 2017. Jon published almost 60 archival journal papers, hundreds of conference presentations, and more than 1000 technical reports.

He was a licensed professional engineer and a member of ASCE, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and National Society of Professional Engineers. He was a member of the honorary societies Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, Sigma Tau, and Chi Epsilon.

In Jon’s spare time he liked skiing, gardening, hiking, golfing, riding roller coasters, singing in his church choir, and writing poetry.

Jon is survived by his wife of 55 years, Pamela of Fort Collins, CO, daughter Elizabeth (Phil) of Spokane, WA, son James (Shawn) of Arvada, CO, grand-daughters Carolyn and Jessica, both of Spokane, WA, sister Jan Jacobs of Arvada, CO, and sister Sue Vogel of Burke, VA. He is preceded in death by his parents Alvin Peterka and Ruth Peterka.

A Celebration of Life Service will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 8, 2019 at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Fort Collins, CO.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for the purpose of the pipe organ restoration, Larimer County Human Society, or a charity of your choice.