Dr. Joseph Peter Gutkoska, a former longtime professor and director of reading programs at Towson University who was also a decorated Korean War veteran, died Tuesday of heart failure at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 81.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Highlandtown, Dr. Gutkoska was 16 when he dropped out of Patterson Park High School to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1944.
He was sent to the Pacific, but because Dr. Gutkoska was underage, he was not allowed to participate in landings. Instead, he served with the occupation forces on the Ryuki Islands, according to a son, Leonard J. Gutkoska of Bel Air.
Discharged in 1946, Dr. Gutkoska returned to Patterson Park High School, where he was a varsity football linebacker and fullback and a member of the wrestling team.
He graduated from Patterson Park in 1949 and began his college studies at what was then Towson State College.
In 1950, he dropped out of college, enlisted in the Army, and was commissioned as a lieutenant after graduating from officers' candidate school.
Sent to Korea, where he joined an infantry unit, Dr. Gutkoska participated in some of the bloodiest and most furious fighting of the war.
He fought at Pork Chop Hill on the 38th parallel and at Hill 266 in western Korea, better known as Old Baldy or Suicide Hill.
During his service, Dr. Gutkoska nearly had a leg blown off from a tank shell. He received a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Hearts.
Discharged from the Army in 1954, he returned to Baltimore and Towson State University, where he completed his bachelor's degree in 1956.
He also earned a master's degree in reading from Temple University in 1960, and a doctorate in education from the University of Maryland in 1967.
An accomplished ballroom dancer, Dr. Gutkoska owned and operated the Joe Sky Dance Studio on York Road in Stoneleigh from 1956 into the 1960s, while teaching eighth-graders at Stemmers Run Middle School until 1958.
From 1958 to 1960, he was a corrective reading teacher in Baltimore County public schools, and was director of the system's reading clinic from 1960 to 1963.
Dr. Gutkoska was also director of the language arts curriculum for the Archdiocese of Baltimore's elementary schools.
In 1967, he joined the faculty of what is now Towson University. For the next 27 years, he served as director of the master's in reading education program there and taught "two dozen different classes," said his son, Leonard J. Gutkoska.
