Eugene Edward “Gene” Dougherty, retired assistant director of building and design at Loyola University Medical Center, was a sheet metal worker who used his on-the-job skills when he became a design engineer for heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
“He was a sheet metal man,” said his wife, Margaret. “He went right to work from high school. His mother needed support, and he was the oldest son.”
Mr. Dougherty, 78, of Arlington Heights, died of liver cancer Wednesday, May 2, in Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.
Mr. Dougherty was a member of Local 73 of the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union from 1946 to 1956, except for two years he spent in the Army.
In 1956, he was working for a sheet metal firm that closed. So he joined a company started by a former co-worker and helped design HVAC systems.
“His expertise was mostly learned on the job,” his wife said. “He always felt from installing systems that he knew how to design them.”
After shifting careers, Mr. Dougherty worked as an HVAC systems design engineer for Chicago architectural firms, including Perkins+Will and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He also worked for several mechanical contractors.
From 1985 to 1995, Mr. Dougherty worked in the building and design department at Loyola in Maywood. He was the department’s assistant director and resident mechanical and electrical engineer when he retired, family members said.
“He was the head of the engineering department and senior project engineer,” said Carl Moravec, a project manager who was hired by Mr. Dougherty in 1989. “His nickname was Mr. Fantastic, because if you asked him how he was, he always said, ‘Fantastic.’
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Mr. Dougherty grew up in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood and went to high school at Loyola Academy. An uncle in the union helped him get his start in the sheet metal trade.
He was drafted into the Army in 1951, during the Korean War, and was assigned to an engineering division. He spent his two-year hitch at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri, family members said.
Mr. Dougherty met his wife at a Sunday night bowling league sponsored by her parish. The two married in 1952, while he was in the Army.
Mr. Dougherty and his family were longtime members of St. James Catholic Church in Arlington Heights.
“He was very involved in the parish,” said Tom Irwin, a friend and fellow parishioner. “If the parish needed somebody, the first call would always be to Gene.”
Mr. Dougherty also volunteered for church projects, which was how he became a producer of the parish’s fundraising musical shows, said his son Eugene. The shows began in the early 1970s under the direction of Rev. Bill Zavaski, now St. James’ pastor but then a newly ordained priest assigned to the parish.
“Father Bill was managing the whole thing,” Mr. Dougherty’s son said. “My dad said, ‘All you do is direct it — use your musical talents. I will take care of everything else.’ My dad was formally the producer for the next 10 years.”
“Gene was very good at that,” said Irwin, who helped with the set construction, site preparation and other production work on one of the shows.
The productions generated revenue for the parish and involved hundreds of people, Mr. Dougherty’s son said.
“It was one of those things that all of those people got lifted up,” he said. “That was my father’s motivation.”
Other survivors include three daughters, Joanne Fox, Kathleen Hopkins and Mary Ellen Darmofal; two sons, James and Timothy; a brother, Robert; and 14 grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 8 p.m. Sunday in Glueckert Funeral Home, 1520 N. Arlington Heights Rd., Arlington Heights. Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Monday in St. James Church, 831 N. Arlington Heights Rd., Arlington Heights.
