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Born in Glen Ridge, NJ, JOHN RAYMOND SHELTER was the son of
Raymond and
Marion Shelter. He attended public schools in
Bloomfield, NJ, later graduating from the Fork
Union Military Academy in Virginia. After briefly
attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he
was appointed to West Point in 1950.
John was captain of the Cadet Rifle Team
and participated in the Sailing Club, Rifle
Club, and Camera Club. According to roommate
Peter Jones, John “had a little Retina-2
35mm camera, and he was good with it: striking
pictures of Don Kirklighter doing his
quite good impression of Robert Mitchum;
Steve Avery at the sink with his electric razor
pursuing that last fugitive whisker; geometric
forms resulting from bright sunlight outlining
on stark white concrete the black shadows of
tarbuckets, rifles, and the outlines of the fortunate few at drill or parade; and a thin column
of smoke rising vertical, but curled, into the
still air of the room on a calm day.”
Jones also said, “John’s wry sense of humor
was priceless. The worse things got, the
wider his smile. One of our great successes involved
Don Kirklighter’s smoking. The rest of
us in the room wanted him to stop, at least
in the room, but he did not. One evening,
John got the idea to pull a couple of horsehairs
out of a dress coat and insert some cigarette-length
pieces into a couple of Don’s cigarettes.
Later, Don lit up and soon the room reeked
of burning hair, but Don noticed nothing
new, only our normal reaction to his smoking.
Later, John made the evening brew, heating
water for Nestle’s chocolate mix with his
trusty blast coil. This was a regular ritual for
easing the pressure during the evening battle
for tenths. When Kirklighter took a gulp, he
was hit by the combination of the horsehair
cigarette smoke mixing with hot chocolate. It
was so vile that he jumped up, spewed out the
chocolate, and howled that we had poisoned
him. It was a great moment! John was also the
first to realize one evening that our none-too-coordinated
Tactical Officer had actually fallen
UPstairs while hurrying to the scene of a
possible infraction.”
After graduation, John attended the
Infantry Officers Basic Course and Airborne
School at Ft. Benning, GA, and served as a
platoon leader there. Afterwards, from 1956
to 1957, he was a member of the Olympic
rifle training squad and competed with the
International-match Rifle Team and the U.S.
Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit. As he
said in the Class of ’54 40-Year Book, he spent
“the most colorful year of [his] life competing
the length and breadth of the U.S. shoulder-to-
shoulder with the best of the finest civilian
and military rifle marksmen in the land.” In
the summer of 1957, he represented the Army
in the National Rifle Matches at Camp Perry.
In 1957, John resigned from the Army and
settled in Montclair, NJ. There, he established
a successful printing and graphic arts business,
Montclair Arts & Craft Press, that he owned
and operated for more than 20 years. After
leaving the Army, John remained close to his
friends from West Point. According to Jones,
he “encouraged my attempts to get published
and sent me books he thought would be helpful
or interesting.” In 1980, John retired from
his printing business and served briefly as a
high school teacher.
In the 1960s and 1970s, John was very
active in the West Point Society of New
York. Due to the anti-war sentiment during
those years, there was opposition to Sylvanus
Thayer’s induction into the Hall of Fame for
Great Americans. John campaigned to overcome
the opposition, and his efforts were successful.
He also contributed to ASSEMBLY
and wrote Earl Blaik’s memorial article.
An avid history buff, John spent hours
in the library at West Point, researching the
deeds of old soldiers and long ago campaigns,
specifically the War Department events of
1917–18 and how they related to the Corps
of Cadets and USMA. He had been a plane
spotter for his community during WWII and
was intrigued by all forms of military aircraft,
especially the Grumman Widgeon seaplane.
John traveled often during the past 20
years, visiting friends and family up and down
the East Coast. Some of his favorite trips included
Massachusetts in the fall, West Point
in the spring, and North Carolina to visit Fork
Union classmates. One time, when he visited
West Point while the Jones family was away,
John “was thoughtful enough to leave what
looked like a small snapping turtle on our
back porch, presumably for the kids.” John
was also fond of family vacations to the New
Jersey shore and Southampton, Long Island,
where he shared his love of boating and fishing
with his children.
John was married and divorced and had
five children: Stacey, Julie, Andrew, Matthew,
and Amy. For the last 20 years of his life,
John was an active member of AA, and he
had scores of friends in the program. Before
his passing, John was living independently at
home, preferring to “die at home on his own
terms than spend more time in a damn hospital
being killed by the treatments.” Jones visited
him at this time and said John was “still the
same guy I met 53 years earlier, proud of his
independence, still getting out a bit, and looking
forward. We spent quite a bit of time on
the phone in the following weeks, and his spirit
was always intact. We even made tentative
plans for going to the 50th Reunion together.”
John died at his home at the age of 73. He
made his final trip to the West Point cemetery
shortly after that. He is survived by two sons:
Andrew, of Swarthmore, PA, and Matthew, of
Newbury, MA; three daughters, Stacey Joyce,
Julie Jackson, and Amy Budetti all of Upper
Montclair, NJ; and 17 grandchildren.
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