Longtime educator at Buhl Planetarium delighted families

James Paul Hughes spent some of the most formative moments of his life under the dome of the Buhl Planetarium on the North Side.

As a child, he listened to “sky shows” nearly every weekend with his father, a technician there.

It’s where he would meet his future wife, marry her and spend most of his career, beginning with operating the Zeiss II projector that was long used to display planets and other cosmic gems on the domed ceiling of the “Theater of the Stars.”

“He impacted a lot of kids nationwide,” said his longtime friend C.W. Kreimer, whose company worked with Mr. Hughes to help create the multimedia planetarium show, “The Sky Above Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Mr. Hughes died Oct. 7 of kidney and liver failure in Las Vegas, where he had lived since 2011. He was 56.

A native of Shaler, Mr. Hughes began working as a “star pilot” — essentially planetarium educator — at Buhl in 1985.

The job required hightech skills, “but you needed a personality, too,” said Ron Baillie, co-director of the Carnegie Science Center.

“He gave them a lot of life, and he would add humor, and he really was able to take those programs and delight families and kids.”

Mr. Hughes helped to introduce the latest digital technology into the planetarium theater, especially as the Buhl Digital Dome moved into the Science Center in 1991.

Ultimately, the planetarium executive producer would distribute more than 450 planetarium shows to universities, museums and other independent planetariums before he left in 2009.

“I would say there’s not a commercial planetarium that hasn’t run a Buhl planetarium show,” Mr. Baillie said.

Dorinda Sankey and Mr. Hughes met at Buhl in 1984 and wed four years later.

“We often laughed at how we came together, grew in admiration of one another and soon were yolked together in life,” she wrote in a tribute on Facebook.

“I remember him saying to everyone involved that there would be no stars on the dome that day because he and I were the stars.”

In 2011, Mr. Hughes moved to Las Vegas to work on the next stage of his career in media production and digital media.

Although the couple divorced, they remained close, she said.

Mr. Hughes is survived by his children, Andrew J. Hughes, 22, and Veronica L. Hughes, 19, both of Cheswick; two brothers, Roy Jr. and Robert Hughes of Shaler; two sisters, Diane Hughes of the North Hills and Shirley Bentley of Springdale — and, as his wife said, “countless friends and colleagues throughout the world and galaxy.”

The family will have a private memorial service.