John Puma; was executive at utility; at 82

JOHN J. PUMA

John J. Puma, a retired executive with the former Boston Edison Co., died Dec. 6 of pancreatic cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was 82.

Mr. Puma, a Belmont resident, was born in East Boston and grew up there and in Medford. He joined the Navy at age 17, serving during World War II. He completed boot camp in Sampson, N.Y., before graduating from Medford High School in 1943. He spent the last three months of the war stationed in the Philippines and served in Tokyo after the war. Mr. Puma completed his service at the naval command in Pearl Harbor and was discharged in 1946.

He then returned to Massachusetts and earned his bachelor's degree in economics from Northeastern University in the early 1950s. He earned his master's degree in economics from Boston University a few years later.

Mr. Puma worked as an economist in New York City while pursuing a PhD in economics from New York University. During a trip to Boston, Mr. Puma met his future wife, Mary Totino, and decided to move back to the area. The couple wed in 1954.

He then worked as a substitute teacher in the Boston public schools for a year before being hired by Boston Edison (now part of NStar) in 1955. During his more than 30 years there, Mr. Puma worked his way up to an executive post in human resources. He became a specialist in equal employment opportunity and management training and spent many years advocating for those issues.

While working for Boston Edison, Mr. Puma was selected as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management fellow and received a master's degree in management from MIT in 1965. He helped establish the Greater Boston Executive Program, which provided local executives access to management training at the Sloan School.

Mr. Puma also taught graduate courses in human resource management at Northeastern in the 1980s.

After his retirement from the utility company in 1988, Mr. Puma focused on religious pursuits. He was president of the Knights of Don Orione in East Boston for five years. He also served as a Eucharistic minister and a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine teacher at St. Camillus Church in Arlington. In 2003, Mr. Puma and his wife were inducted into the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.

Besides his wife, Mr. Puma leaves two daughters, Mary of Boxford and Martha Corcoran of Scituate; a son, John Jr. of Belmont; and six grandchildren.

Services have been held.