John S. Cullen

John S. “Jack” Cullen, of Buffalo, who began a business in the breezeway of his parents’ Eggertsville home and built it into North America’s largest producer of drying agents, died unexpectedly Sunday in his vacation home in Kenneglen, Town of Wales. He was 74.

Mr. Cullen’s company, Multisorb Technologies, employs more than 500 people in factories in West Seneca, Cheektowaga, Mobile, Ala., and Telford, England, and holds more than 100 active patents. It makes packets that protect products, such as electronics and food, from being damaged by exposure to moisture or oxygen.

A tireless civic leader known for his love of theater, he led the fight to save and restore the debt-ridden Shea’s Performing Arts Center in the late 1970s, stepping in as chairman of the board and putting the landmark showplace on a firm financial footing.

He plunged into another public debate in the late 1990s —the Peace Bridge. As founder and chairman of SuperSpan Upper Niagara LLC, he campaigned against plans for a twin structure and proposed a signature bridge that would serve as an impressive international gateway to Buffalo.

Mr. Cullen also was a major benefactor of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, from which he graduated in 1954. He donated $2 million in 2006, to help build the school’s new science labs and classrooms and to support the annual school musical. In the 1980s, he funded the Cullen Lecture Hall at St. Joe’s.

Mr. Cullen recalled that he was not at all enthusiastic about the school or the community after his parents moved here from Pittsburgh in 1952.

“I thought my father was sending me to jail,” Cullen joked in 2006. “And not only that, the jail was located somewhere north of the North Pole.”

He began his business career after his first year, studying chemistry at Notre Dame University. As a summer intern at Union Carbide, he learned that condensation from auto air conditioners would short out car radios. A desiccant could fix that problem, he said, and he developed one that launched what became Cullen Industries.

As the company grew, it moved from a loft on Elmwood Avenue to a factory on Niagara Street and then, in 1996, to the former Kayak Pools plant on Harlem Road in West Seneca.

He was admitted to the international Young Presidents Organization at a Paris convocation in 1974 and was a finalist for the Upstate New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1993.

When the Black Rock Manufacturers Association was revitalized, he was its first president. He was trustee of the Erie Niagara Industrial Development Corp., chairman and founder of the advisory board for the University at Buffalo School of Management, United Way section leader, and member of the former Erie County Urban Waterfront Advisory Committee. He also was active with the Boy Scouts and YMCA.

His love of the theater included acting with a community theater group and in small parts at Melody Fair. He went on to become a governor of the Shaw Festival, a board member at Artpark in Lewiston and a trustee of Studio Arena Theatre.

“My dad had an engineer’s mind and a poet’s soul,” his daughter Kathleen Cullen Harwood said.

Mr. Cullen also produced several plays and musicals on and off Broadway and was lead producer fro “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” and the revival of “The Music Man.”

Surviving are two sons, J. Kevin and Thomas S.; three daughters, Barbara L., Kathleen Cullen Harwood and Mary Louise; two brothers, David M. and Robert Barry; and a sister, Roberta Lauer.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 10 a. m. Saturday in St. Mark Catholic Church, 401 Woodward Ave.