Ahead of his time on clean steel making

Thomas Schott was an innovator.

An engineer and entrepreneur who developed revolutionary steel technology, Mr. Schott was decades ahead in his thinking about environmentally conscious alternatives to traditional steel making.

In the 1990s, he proposed converting a shuttered steel mill in Monessen into a factory of the future, where iron could be produced without burning traditional pollutants like coke.

“Conceptually, it’s an extremely interesting project with great potential,” he said in a June 1990 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Those plans never came to fruition, but it didn’t discourage him.

Mr. Schott died Sunday at a Squirrel Hill nursing home after a long battle with dementia. He was 88.

He graduated from Altoona High School in 1948 and headed to Penn State University before he signed a minor league contract with the Philadelphia Phillies just months into his first school year.

“He loved baseball,” said Mr. Schott’s longtime partner, Patti Rote of Bloomfield. “As a kid, that’s all he did.”

Mr. Schott pitched for two seasons before an injury ended his baseball career.

He returned to Penn State and earned a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering in 1954. After graduation, he enlisted in the Army during the final days of the Korean War and served as a first lieutenant and a construction unit commander in the Army Corps of Engineers through 1956.

In June of 1958, he married Barbara Halpert. She died in 1996.

During the early days of his career, Mr. Schott worked as an engineer for Dravo Corp. and earned another bachelor’s degree, in industrial management, from what is now Carnegie Mellon University. In 1962, he branched out with two partners to form Holley, Kenney, Schott Inc.

The Downtown engineering and construction firm thrived, even during major economic downturns, according to a 1974 article in the Post-Gazette.

“All indications are that not only this year but the next two or three years should be excellent,” Mr. Schott said at the time about his firm’s nearly $10 million in annual volume.

With Mr. Schott as its president and CEO, the firm hired more than 300 employees and opened offices in Washington, D.C., West Virginia and even Paris.

In 1964, Mr. Schott went back to school for a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

“He wanted to run his own business and he felt he needed those credentials because he was really a techie,” Ms. Rote said. “He was really a great mathematician but he didn’t have business skills.”

Much of the success of the firm was attributed to Mr. Schott’s forward-thinking approach to anti-pollution technology, a theme often repeated in several of his other ventures.

Later in his career, he founded the engineering firm Schott Inc. and served as president of Pellet Technology Corp. and as chairman of Oxide Recycle.

After his wife’s death, a friendship between Ms. Rote and Mr. Schott blossomed into something more, she said.

“It was a romantic adventure,” she recalled. “Tom was a romanticist. He loved life. He was so smart and so witty.”

The flowers that he brought her on their first date turned into a weekly devotion of his love.

“He showed up at my apartment with a bouquet of flowers,” she said. “It was every week, not just one time. He just loved flowers. He used to say that it made a room feel warm and inviting.”

Ms. Rote also recalled his deadpan sense of humor.

“When he was bringing some things to my apartment, he showed up with a box of baseballs. They were dirty. I said, ‘Can’t you at least clean them?’ and he said, ‘You don’t clean baseballs,’” she said, laughing at the memory.

As he was with other aspects of his life, Mr. Schott wasn’t satisfied until he learned all of the mechanics of sailing.

“Tom didn’t do anything without fully understanding it,” she said.

“He studied everything and really focused on what he wanted to do.”

Had he been asked about his proudest moment, Mr. Schott wouldn’t say it was his long career or accomplishments, Ms. Rote said.

“He was able to serve his country,” Ms. Rote said. “He was most proud of having those two years in the Army.”

Mr. Schott is survived by his sisters, Nancy Jones of Phoenix and Mary Alyce Walker of San Francisco.

Visitation will be held at 3:30 p.m. Thursday at John A. Freyvogel Sons Inc., 4900 Centre Ave., Shadyside, followed by a memorial service at 4:30 p.m.

Remembrances may be made to the Wounded Warrior Project at www.woundedwarriorproject.org.