Murrysville engineer was constantly curious

John D. McAdoo Jr. was constantly curious, with the combined passions of an engineer and an artist.

“Anything that involved making anything turned into a giant project of diagrams and research,” said his daughter, Jane Cieply.

He loved to create things—including sketches, paintings, architectural drawings, to name a few.

“He was a guy who was always there when you had a question, or you needed him,” said his son, John D. McAdoo III.

John Dare “Mac” McAdoo Jr., 89, of Murrysville, died Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019.

He was born March 24, 1930, in Uniontown.

A graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology, he spent most of his career with Westinghouse Electric Corp., becoming one of the company’s top authorities on nuclear safety.

After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the USSR, McAdoo was one of the first Americans to visit the site, studying the disaster to learn what safety lessons could be applied to other nuclear plants.

He worked hard at his job, according to his children.

“He’d go to work in the morning, come back for dinner, then drive back and work in the evenings,” his son said.

In his free time, McAdoo loved to sail. He and his wife Nancy would take their children out sailing, sometimes taking trips to Chesapeake Bay, other times racing in regattas.

“I loved it, being out on the lake with dad,” Cieply said.

He passed on the love of sailing to his son.

“It was a lot of fun, he got me started on something that I still do today,” McAdoo III said.

Mr. McAdoo also enjoyed creating art with pen, watercolors and pastels. After his retirement, he dedicated himself into his hobbies and his family.

“There were just so many projects,” Cieply said. “He was used to being busy 18 hours a day with his work with Westinghouse, and then he threw all of that into various other projects.”

He’d make greeting cards with his own watercolor paintings on the front.

“It was as good as anything you’d see on the store shelf,” his son said.

His children described him as kind, polite and focused, with a dry and occasionally surprising sense of humor.

“He was a gentleman, in the truest sense of the word,” his daughter said. “Very polite, very congenial, very considerate.”

He designed the stained glass windows at Newlonsburg Presbyterian Church in Murrysville, when he served as an elder.

Mr. McAdoo is survived by his wife of 63 years, Nancy; sons John McAdoo III and his wife Sue, and Daniel McAdoo; daughter Jane Cieply and her husband Paul, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A celebration of life will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Newlonsburg Presbyterian Church, 4600 Old William Penn Highway, Murrysville.

Memorial donations may be made to Open Your Heart to a Senior, 4600 Old William Penn Highway, Murrysville, PA, 15668.

Hart Funeral Home of Murrysville handled the arrangements.