Donald Hudson Pfarrer, 87, of Carefree, AZ, passed away on August 18, 2022.
Don was born September 22, 1934 in Dayton, OH to Charles and Thelma Pfarrer, and was the middle of three brothers. After graduating Fairmont High School in Dayton he attended Harvard College where he studied literature, history, and economics, graduating in 1956. Don married his first wife, Anne Horton, in 1956 and they had two daughters, Liza Loofbourrow of Cave Creek, AZ, born 1961, and Zoe Groom of Warren, VT, born 1971. He joined the Navy in 1957 where he spent two years in the gunnery department on a destroyer, and a year as a naval gunfire officer in the 10th Marines.
This experience shaped an important personal decision when the war in Vietnam began five years later and Don volunteered for recall, knowing the Navy was in need of experienced naval gunfire officers. In Vietnam he served as naval gunfire boss in the 7th Marine (infantry), and as artillery and naval gunfire forward observer. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V and the Purple Heart.
Don returned from war to Tunbridge, VT, where he and Anne farmed and he wrote a novel, Neverlight, drawing on his experiences in war. After years on the Tunbridge farm, which solidified Don’s lifelong love affair with Vermont, they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he worked as the political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal and covered the presidential campaigns of 1972, ’76 and ’80. He left the Journal in 1984, returning to the farm in Vermont to raise sheep, in which endeavor he was greatly assisted by his daughter Zoe.
In 1990 he and Anne divorced, and in 1999 he married Anne Burling, with whom he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Warren, Vermont until her death in April 2021. Don continued writing his entire life; his published works include Cold River, Neverlight, Temple and Shipman, and A Fearless Man. He is survived by his older brother Charles Patrick Pfarrer Jr., his younger brother Stephen Pfarrer, his daughters Liza and Zoe, sons-in-law Bryan Loofbourrow and Matt Groom, his stepchildren Ford Harvey, Alexandra Harvey, and Ian Just, his grandchildren Ian and Luke Groom, and his step-grandchildren Riley and Sam Nelson, Finn and Brooklyn Just, and Bella and Jack Harvey. A memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m. September 17 at the Warren United Church in Warren, Vermont with a reception to follow at Zoe and Matt Groom’s house in Warren.
