George Satovich had a blast with rockets

When George Satovich was a child, he built homemade rockets and dreamed of space travel.

Boyhood play paid off for Satovich, a retired rocket scientist, designer of medical devices and entrepreneur.

He once led a team at aerospace firm Raytheon that developed a guidance system for rockets.

Satovich, 66, who grew up in Crosby-Ironton, died of a heart attack Oct. 7 in his Minnetonka home. He attended St. Cloud State University before joining the Army and working in intelligence in Germany during the Cold War.

He returned to finish his bachelor's degree at St. Cloud State University and earned a master's degree in high energy physics from the University of Minnesota.

He worked his way through school, climbing high steel hundreds of feet in the air to help build the IDS building in downtown Minneapolis.

He taught high school for a bit, but by the 1970s was hired by Raytheon in Massachusetts, a job that eventually led to that guidance system.

His solution was simple: "Tell them to put it in a bigger box," said his son Michael Satovich of Golden Valley.

At home, he was "very easy-going, joking all the time," said his son. "When it came to business, he was driven."

Blood pumps, heart monitor

At Raytheon, many couldn't solve a particular problem, "so my dad set up a cot and lived at work until he solved it," said Michael Satovich.

In the late 1970s, Satovich returned to the Twin Cities, going to work for Control Data. He soon started a couple of firms, such as Cardio Systems, where he was the designer of a component of blood pumps used in heart surgery. His client was Bio-Medicus, which was later acquired by Medtronic.

But it worked just fine.

He also developed a heart rate monitor, the ET 2000, that is worn on the wrist. It was endorsed by the Minneapolis Heart Institute, the first cardiac center to endorse such a product, reported the March 1985 Minnesota Business Journal.

Mike Franey, a physicist who studied at the University of Minnesota with Satovich, said he was a "fierce competitor" on the intramural football team and had a "winning personality."

"He was always moving forward, in spite of the challenges life and business present," said Franey.

Satovich was also a NASA contractor.

He closed his business in 1989 and moved to the East Coast, working on government contracts for a firm, and returned to the Twin Cities in the late 1990s when he retired.

In retirement, he served as a substitute teacher and tutor for the Osseo School District.

In addition to Michael, he is survived by his other son, Matthew of Great Falls, Mont.; daughters Michelle Arbeiter of Minneapolis and Maria Olson of Bloomington; former wives Diane Roggenbauer of Maple Grove and Barbie Fredrickson of Anaconda, Mont., and six grandchildren.

Services will be held at 10 a.m. today at the Catholic Church of St. Gerard, 9600 Regent Av. N., Brooklyn Park.