George
W. Rohrbaugh, Jr.
Alexandria, Pa.
EHS classmates George Rohrbaugh and Doris Manahan
have been a couple since senior-prom month of 1954.
They married in 1957 and have two well-educated
redheaded daughters, an IBM son, and four active
grandchildren.
George is a physicist/inventor and Doris is a
professional artist.
They’ve lived in Gettysburg, Lancaster, State
College (ten years), and Alexandria PA (thirty-three
years).
George appreciates Ray Gray and all the EHS
teachers who helped him receive the first Glatfelter
four-year college scholarship.
At Gettysburg he majored in physics and math and
graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1958.
He won a three-year nuclear-physics fellowship to
Notre Dame but left South Bend after the first semester
for “the real world.”
He started work at Hamilton Watch Company in
Lancaster where he developed safing and arming devices for
small rockets.
In 1961 George moved his family to State College
where he bought his first house and joined HRB-Singer as a
research physicist.
Specializing in acoustics, he patented an
Ultrasonic Yarn Trimmer, the Shaft Spider Tracking Arrow,
and an Automatic Gunnery Shock Wave Scoring System.
In 1971 George and Doris found a dream house in the
country and began their ongoing project of restoration.
George commuted for two years, then started his own
company, Accubar Engineering, around the electronic
scoring devices he’d developed for HRB.
He added patents on supersonic curved-rod sensors
and expanded Accubar into the field of military rifle
marksmanship training.
He’s equipped many ranges in the US and Canada
(most recently for the Marine Corps in Hawaii and
California), and a few abroad, with live-fire computerized
target scoring systems.
Currently George has a licensing and consulting
contract with ATA Defense Systems and “can never retire.”
He stays fit by skiing, keeping up with the
grandchildren, and working on “The Munster House.”
He thinks our generation is very fortunate to have
grown up through these fast-paced, high-tech times, but
wishes he’d kept his low-tech ‘32 Chevy.