Paul X. O'Neill; dancer founded high-tech firm
Paul X. O'Neill was a gifted musician who staged musicals at the US Naval Academy before founding P.X. Engineering, which manufactured nuclear reactors and tubing for the Big Dig.
"He was a self-made man from Roxbury, who made hard-to-fabricate items to exacting standards, but he was also a wonderful pianist who could dance just like Gene Kelly," retired Rear Admiral Paul Mulloy of Falmouth, Mr. O'Neill's classmate at the academy, said yesterday.
"He called himself a nuclear nerd, but he was very unnerdy. He was a great entertainer who should have been on the stage," Peter X. O'Neill Sr. of North Andover said yesterday of his father, 78, who died of pneumonia Sept. 25 in Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The son of a gas company worker who also sang on the vaudeville circuit, Mr. O'Neill was the youngest of six children raised in Roxbury when it was an Irish neighborhood. He delivered newspapers as a young man.
"He sold the route for a profit; I think that's what sparked his entrepreneurial spirit," said his daughter, Lorena Watt of Wellington, Fla.
After graduating from Boston College High School, he was accepted to Juilliard School of Music and MIT, "but he couldn't afford the tuition, so he joined the Navy instead," said his son.
While serving as a signalman at the naval air base at Squantum, where he got the nickname P.X., Mr. O'Neill was selected to attend the Naval Academy. He produced and directed many musicals with all-midshipman casts and performed many times on the trumpet and piano.
During summer vacations, he worked on the Fish Pier in Boston. "It was a scene right out of 'On the Waterfront,' very Marlon Brando," said Mulloy, who also worked on the pier.
After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1954, he was commandant of the Navy's Seabees at Quonset, R.I. He retired from the service as a lieutenant commander.
In 1964, Mr. O'Neill founded P.X. Engineering Co., which manufactured equipment for power generation, petroleum processing, and nuclear energy in a warehouse in Everett. The company, which was dissolved in the late 1990s, grew into a multinational corporation that employed several hundred people in facilities in South Boston, Woburn, and Belfast, Ireland.
The company manufactured the Tokamak fusion test reactor at Princeton University, the Fluidized-Catalytic Cracking Reactor at
"He was very competitive and principled and treated his people right," Mulloy said. "He was the kind of skipper you'd want to have."
Mr. O'Neill retired to Boca Raton, Fla., but he remained devoted to the Navy and entertained many midshipmen during Fleet Week in Fort Lauderdale.
"He was quite a character, a true Boston Irishman who always had a story to tell," his daughter said. "He couldn't pass a young serviceman or woman in uniform on the street without shaking his or her hand."
He was a member of the Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club in Boca Raton and an active member of the Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale.
"He had the face of a boxer, and you'd have thought he was a cop, but he never forgot where he came from," said his son. "He got into high-society places, but he was never high society."
Mr. O'Neill was married for nearly 50 years to Phyllis (Lorina) O'Neill, originally of Boston, who died in 2003.
In addition to his daughter and son, he leaves another son, Paul X. Jr. of Weston; two sisters, Althea Nannicelli of Medford and Rita Reid of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.; seven grandchildren; and his companion, Eva Lyons of Fort Lauderdale.
Burial with military honors will be held at 2:30 p.m. today in Forest Hill Cemetery in Lynnfield. 