Harry S. Nutter, IT pioneer

Harry S. Nutter, 77, of Mount Airy, a retired supervisor at the Defense Personnel Support Center in Philadelphia and a credit union official, died Friday of a heart attack at Chestnut Hill Hospital.

Mr. Nutter graduated from Southeast Catholic High School, now Neumann-Goretti, and was a scholarship student at Lincoln University.

During the Korean War, he served in the Air Force in England and took courses at a University of Maryland study-abroad program there.

After his discharge, he attended Temple University. He planned to graduate and then go to law school, he later told his family, but in 1958 IBM offered him a position in the new field of computer technology.

In 1960, he became a computer programmer at the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot, which became the Defense Personnel Support Center. He was director of telecommunications and information systems at the DPSC when he retired in 1993.

In 1995, Mr. Nutter was inducted into the Defense Personnel Support Center Hall of Fame. According to the citation, "He spearheaded DPSC's automation revolution, which was used as a model throughout the Defense Logistics Agency. . . . His leadership, foresight and planning kept DPSC on the cutting edge of technology. His superb management in information telecommunications technology put DPSC in the vanguard of the Defense Department's automation security efforts."

For 15 years, Mr. Nutter was chairman of the board of the Defense Supply of Philadelphia Federal Credit Union, which merged with the Sun Federal Credit Union. Since 1995, he had been chairman of Sun Federal's South Philadelphia Advisory Board and, since 2005, had served on the board of Sun Federal Credit Union.

The credit union's president, Gary Moritz, said: "Harry was more than a board member; he was like a father figure to me. His humor was contagiously filled with wisdom gained over his many years of leading."

Mr. Nutter volunteered as a computer science teacher at St. Therese School in Mount Airy until it closed in 2002. He later volunteered at De Paul Catholic School in Germantown.

Since 1957, he had been married to Vivian Carey Nutter. They met at a roller-skating rink in West Philadelphia.

He enjoyed photography, listening to jazz and Frank Sinatra, and dancing and traveling with his wife.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Nutter is survived by daughters Valerie Nutter-Lawrence and Christine, a sister, and a granddaughter. Another daughter, Lisa Rodgers, died in 2009.

A Funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Therese of the Child Jesus Church, Upsal and Ardleigh Streets, where friends may call after 9:30. Burial will be in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Cheltenham.