John P. Bacon

Bacon was born at home in Philadelphia – a common practice at the time. He graduated from LaSalle College High School, joined the Army for World War II and island hopped across the Pacific – nearly drowning during his first beach landing.

After the war, he came home to hear about a new technology sweeping the nation. Television. Curious, he built a TV, the first he ever watched. He worked as an engineer and was called upon to redesign the Army plane ejection mechanism that often failed in low temperatures. It took him a few weeks, and the new design was quickly adopted by the military. He later laughed that nowadays such a change would take years, involve thousands of emails, hundreds of approvals and billions of dollars.

He worked on the space program, called upon to design testing protocols for the heat shields on the capsules that took Americans to the moon and back. He did all his math with a slide rule – computers weren’t yet a thing.

When he wasn’t engineering the world, he was helping his wife of 73 years, Elizabeth, raise eight children. And although neither parent were college graduates, they put a premium on education. All eight kids are college graduates, and many continued their studies beyond college.

Bacon was an accomplished painter, and his children proudly hang his works in their homes. He retained a love of music throughout his life, beginning in his high school days when he played hooky to catch a concert by his lifelong favorite, Benny Goodman.

Elizabeth survives him, as do his eight children and their spouses, Camille Bacon-Smith, Bonnie Bacon Greenspan (Robert), Kristine Vega (Rufo), Beverly Bacon, Melanie Bacon, John Bacon (Julie), Robin Bacon Hoffman (Jeffrey), and Ward Bacon (Karen), as well as 16 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. A memorial mass is planned for family at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, with interment at Arlington National Cemetery later this year. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Food for the Poor (https://www.foodforthepoor.org/).