Owned J&C Hobbies, loved to fly radio-controlled model airplanes

CHARLES J. ‘CHUCK’ PUSATERI JR.

Feb. 17, 1936 - Aug. 4, 2018

For Charles J. “Chuck” Pusateri Jr., happiness was a sunny day in a wide open field.

Before an illness robbed him of the use of his legs, the model airplane enthusiast could often be found on weekends with his friends, flying his latest radio-controlled model high in the sky.

Mr. Pusateri, 82, of Penn Hills, died Saturday of heart failure.

“He taught hundreds of people to fly. He just absolutely loved it,” said his wife, Betty Pusateri, 72. “His health just kept him from enjoying it. It was sad.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pusateri operated J&C Hobbies for 35 years, before shuttering their Penn Hills business last year.

The shop started on the sun porch of their home, Mrs. Pusateri said.

“We used to have people come banging on the door at midnight, looking for glue to finish a model plane,” she said. “The day we moved out of my house and into a commercial space in 1993 was the best day of my life.”

No matter the size of the store, it never seemed large enough to accommodate all of the products that Mr. Pusateri wanted to sell, she said.

“You’d think a 7,000square-foot space would be enough, but it wasn’t,” Mrs. Pusateri said. “We outgrew it within months.”

So, the couple expanded into four locations before the internet eventually cut into their sales, forcing them to scale down to their single shop in Penn Hills in recent years.

Mr. Pusateri’s love of model planes began when he was a young man, growing up in Lawrenceville.

“Chuck had started flying as a kid,” his wife said.

He flew many types of aircraft, including unmotorized sailplanes — or gliders — and he once kept a plane in constant flight for eight hours as part of an endurance challenge, she said.

“We used to go to sailplane competition throughout the country,” she said. “Chuck had lots and lots of trophies; he was very good at what he did. When this became something he could do as a business, he did it and he loved it.”

But Mr. Pusateri wasn’t always a hobbyist and businessman.

As a young man, he joined the Capuchin Friars at the Province of St. Augustine in Millvale, where he took orders and became “Brother Paul.”

“He went to the seminary when he was 15,” his wife said. “But he left there after about seven or eight years.”

In 1953, Mr. Pusateri changed his mind and enlisted in the Navy, serving as a photographer aboard the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier, until 1957.

After the military, he worked as a photographer for Pittsburgh Suburban Newspapers, a chain of seven papers that was based in Mt. Lebanon.

He also worked as a staff photographer during the 1966 gubernatorial campaign of the late Gov. Raymond P. Shafer and had a studio in what was then the Downtown Hilton Hotel.

In 1972, he met Betty Morris when they both worked for Weight Watchers.

“I had lost 110 pounds and Chuck had lost 150 pounds and we actually had our wedding at a Weight Watchers center,” in May 1974, said Mrs. Pusateri, who taught classes at the center while her husband served as photo and graphics coordinator.

The honeymoon didn’t last long, though, Mrs. Pusateri said. She moved into a home with her new mother-in-law and Mr. Pusateri’s four children almost immediately after the wedding.

“I married my husband’s whole family,” she said.

But the family thrived together, including Jancee, their golden retriever who came to work with them daily at the hobby shop.

In the days before dogs had their own Instagram accounts, customers would sometimes come to the shop just to visit Jancee and his predecessor, J.C., Mrs. Pusateri said.

She brought Jancee to the funeral home during services this week so he could say goodbye to his beloved master, Mrs. Pusateri said.

“He greeted everybody at the funeral home,” she said. “He knew that something was wrong. He knows that his dad is gone.”

Mrs. Pusateri said she will miss looking into her husband’s eyes more than anything.

“He had the most beautiful blue eyes,” she said.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Pusateri is survived by sons Joseph Pusateri of Parker, Pa., and Jeffrey Pusateri of Baden; daughters Julie Woods of Plum and Jeanene Begley of Evans City; eight grandchildren; and four greatgrandchildren.

The funeral was earlier this week.