Homer Sanford Piper

US Veteran WORLD WAR II KOREA: COL US ARMY Retired Army Colonel Homer S. Piper, who was active in church and community affairs in Odenton, died Monday of heart disease at the Augsburg Lutheran Home. Colonel Piper, who was 85 and had lived in Millersville for many years, was chief of manpower on the 2nd Army staff when he retired in 1962. He worked at Fort Meade as a civilian incentive awards administrator from 1963 until 1975. An officer in the Army Reserve since 1931, he was called to active duty in 1940 and after his graduation from Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, started a basic training program at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, and then was sent to South America. He built airfields in Suriname and in French Guiana, where he became commanding officer of U. S. forces. After a number of other assignments, he went to Fort Meade to serve on the 2nd Army staff. He was sent to Korea from 1956 to 1958 – a period during which he taught a Bible class for Koreans in Seoul. After returning to Fort Meade in Odenton, he became president of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church and oversaw the construction of its present church building. He sang bass in the church choir and later in the Augsburg Home choir and had been a member of the boards of Lutheran Hospital and the Lutheran Mission Society. He became active in the Washington Chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and started a local fund-raising telethon. In 1984, he served as a member of the Electoral College that officially elected Ronald Reagan to a second term. He was a longtime member and recipient of the Minute Man Award of the Reserve Officers Association and belonged to the Military Order of the World Wars. Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the colonel was reared in Cleveland, where he was cadet commander of a high school ROTC program. Though he received a presidential appointment to the U. S. Military Academy, his parents refused to sign the papers required because he was under age. In 1962, he completed the requirements for a bachelor's of science at the University of Maryland. His wife, the former Alma Marie Karsten, whom he married in 1935, died in 1977. He is survived by a daughter, three brothers, Stanley, George and Walter S. Piper, all of Cleveland, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Services were to be held at 11:30 a.m. today at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Odenton, 1306 Odenton Road.