Johannes L. Scheltema
2007
Johannes Lorenzo "Hans" Scheltema, 79, a retired health physicist with the Maryland Department of Health, died of cardiac arrest  Aug. 11 at Doctors Community Hospital in Lanham. He also had Alzheimer's disease.
Mr. Scheltema, who retired from his position in 1992, worked previously  as a lab technician for the National Institutes of Health and Maryland  General Hospital in Baltimore.
He was born in Lawrence, Kan., and his family moved to Takoma Park and later Bethesda in the late 1920s. He graduated from St. John's College  High School in the District.
He was a student at George Washington University when he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. He served in West Germany as a medic and then completed his education on the GI Bill. He received a bachelor's degree in zoology from GWU in 1959.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Mr. Scheltema volunteered as a Boy Scout troop leader in Parkton, Md. He was an outdoorsman who led family hiking and backpacking trips for the Greater Baltimore Group of the Sierra Club in the 1970s.
Mr. Scheltema had a longtime interest in alternative energy sources and commuted to work by bike in the 1970s. He also developed rooftop solar hot  water systems for his home.
In 1977, he moved to York County, Pa., where he spent years working on his dream to live with his family self-sufficiently off solar power and to raise his own food.
Mr. Scheltema lived in Glen Rock, Pa., until recently, when he moved to  Villa Rosa Nursing Home in Mitchellville.
His marriage to Mary Kim ended in divorce.
Survivors include Grace Heckman Scheltema of Lanham, whom he married in 1961; four children from his second marriage, Christina Scheltema and Hans Scheltema, both of Washington, Katrina Sweeney of Matawan, N.J., and Rose Scheltema of Venice, Calif.; two brothers, Walter Scheltema of Mitchellville and Rudolf Scheltema of Falmouth Mass.; and one granddaughter.