John James McKenna

John James Joseph McKenna, of Houston, Texas and Breckenridge, Colo., born April 23, 1929 in Far Rockaway, NY, died May 16, 2011 in Houston, Texas. Mr. McKenna was a member of a family that traced its roots to pre-Revolutionary War New York State on the one hand and to 19th-century Irish immigration to New York City on the other.

He attended Brooklyn Preparatory High School and Columbia University, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering, and was a registered professional engineer in over twenty states and a dozen countries. For a number of years, he served as an alumni interviewer and recruiter for Columbia.

He was a veteran of the US Navy seeing combat service in North Korea on the destroyer USS Soley (DD-707), and afterward on the USS Benjamin Franklin Isherwood (DD-520), which memorably was forced to navigate the insufficiently charted harbor of Cuidadela, Minorca by “heaving the lead” to measure its depth by hand. For most of his life, he carried in his wallet the card he was issued upon crossing the Equator by ship for the first time, and he took modest pride in owning passports that routinely required the addition of extra pages to accommodate all his border-crossing stamps. Mr. McKenna spent most of his business career in petro-chemical corporations that operated extensively outside the United States, including a 1960s stint in which he relocated his young family to the United Kingdom; during his life, he worked for Mobil Oil, Chemico, the M.W. Kellogg Co. and Huffington Corp., the energy business founded by the late Roy M. Huffington.

For more than three decades, Mr. McKenna owned property in Breckenridge, Colo. and lived there during the summer, where he was an enthusiastic volunteer and supporter of the Breckenridge Music Festival.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Nicholas Francis McKenna Jr. and Alice Callahan McKenna; his siblings William and Sr. Patricia McKenna; and by his first and second wives, Mary Joan Lauder McKenna and Mary Therese Draffen McKenna. He is survived by his children, Maryn McKenna of Atlanta, Lieutenant Colonel Robert McKenna of Annapolis, Matthew McKenna of Los Angeles and Elizabeth McKenna of Kalamazoo, Mich., and by his grandchildren Zachary McKenna and Nola McKenna.

Donations may be made in his name to the Breckenridge Music Festival, Breckenridge, Colo.

There will be a viewing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, May 19, 2011 at Earthman Bellaire Funeral Home, 6700 Ferris, Bellaire, Texas and a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 a.m. Friday, May 20 at St. Michael’s Catholic Church, 1801 Sage Road, Houston, Texas. Burial will be at Valley Brook Cemetery in Breckenridge.