NO. 17364 • 26 July 1928 – 7 October 1988

Died 7 October 1988 in Bath, Maine, aged 60 years.
Ashes were scattered in the Rocky Mountains.

COLONEL KINDIG WAS HONORED with the Meritorious Service Award in recognition of honorable service in 1980, the same year he was transferred to the Retired Reserves. His contributions to the Army Reserves from 1955‑80 were in electronic technology, technical German translations and pulmonary physiology.

Neal Kindig was born 26 July 1928 in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, to Bruce and Hyacinth Kindig. He had a distinguished high school career, winning the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (1946) and the Bausch & Lomb National Science Award (1946).

After graduating as valedictorian from Medicine Lodge High School in 1946, he accepted an appointment to the West Point Military Academy. He had an academically and athletically distinguished career at the Point, earning the award as No. 1 in the subject of Ordnance in the graduating Class of 1950 and commissioned second lieutenant, Signal Corps.

Lieutenant Kindig was assigned to the European Command in 1950 and served in Germany in the 97th Signal Operation Battalion as radio operator and cryptographer. In 1954, Captain Kindig attended the Signal School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and was subsequently assigned to Fort Gordon as chief Engineer of the TV branch. He was honorably discharged in August 1955 and became a Reserve officer.

Now a civilian, Neal concentrated on studies in electrical engineering at the University of Colorado, earning a master's in 1957. This was the beginning of a long and distinguished career in teaching from 1957 until his retirement from the university in 1983, and in research from 1964‑‑88.

Neal started teaching electronics in 1957 at the University of Colorado and took a leave of absence for two years, 1962‑64, to study for a Ph.D in electrical engineering at Stanford University. His work on photoemission studies of the band structure of semiconductors resulted in eight published papers.

In 1969, Neal started consulting with the Pulonary Functions Lab at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. He combined logic and mathematical respiration which resulted in a computer-based system that measures the diffusion capacity of a single breath. This method continues to be used effectively at Fitzsimmons.

In 1979‑80, he was appointed a research fellow at the Webb‑Waring Lung Institute, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. His work with physicians focused on the critical problem of patients undergoing resuscitation from cardiac arrest or from battlefield injuries. He helped develop a buffer system, the medical patent which he shares, and which promises to revolutionize the care of the critically ill. He is the principal author or contributor to over 50 professional articles on medical research.

Dr. Kindig moved professionally across three fields ‑ solid state physics, digital electronics, and biomedical engineering - using knowledge gained in one and applied to the other.

Neal married Jean Matthews in 1960; their son David was born in 1963 at Stanford, and their daughter Susan was born in 1965 in Boulder. He was an ardent outdoor enthusiast who eagerly sought the challenges of the high Colorado peaks in the summers and the ski slopes in the winters.

He was a kind, gentle man, a respected professor, a dedicated researcher and loving family man whose friends, family and colleages will miss him.