John J. "Jack" McKenna, 78, a longtime NASA aeronautical engineer who became a National Security Agency systems engineer, died September 8 at his home in Laurel, Maryland.
Mr. McKenna worked on the Apollo lunar missions while at the space agency from the late 1960s to the '80s. He retired from NSA in the late 1990s.
John Joseph McKenna was a native of Brooklyn, New York, and a 1955 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. In 1966, he received a master's degree in business administration from Adelphi University in New York City. He was a 1974 graduate of the University of Maryland's law school and did some administrative law work while at NASA. He also did legal work in private practice over the years.
He was an engineer at Sperry in Garden City, New York, before moving to the Washington, DC area in the late 1960s. He was a founding member of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Laurel, where he had been a parish council member and a lector. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus and a former trustee and Santa's helper for the Montpelier Community Association in Laurel.
Survivors include his wife of 43 years, five children, a sister and 10 grandchildren.
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