Mary Anne Schrott Cahir remembers being fast asleep next to her husband, John Cahir ’61, ’71 PhD EMS, when the phone rang in the middle of the night. She answered and handed the receiver to him: On the line was an excited student. Several, actually. “They were all up at the meteorology department together, watching this storm come,” says Mary Anne ’63, ’68 MEd Edu. “John went up at 1:30 in the morning.” There was little that John Cahir liked better than his students, and weather.

Cahir spent all of a nearly 50-year academic career at Penn State, arriving as an undergraduate in 1955 and becoming an innovative and popular professor, mentor, and research scientist, among a group of pioneers in the field who first used computer technology to predict and analyze weather. He also brought modern weather telecasts to Pennsylvania residents as a WPSX-TV forecaster. In 1993, Cahir became vice provost and dean for undergraduate education; he retired in 2002.

Cahir grew up in coastal Scituate, Mass., where his mom cleaned houses to support her five children; Cahir’s father died when John was a baby. His Navy recruiter brother signed him up for service at 17, and Cahir worked as a firefighter, ship welder, drawbridge operator, and shipman before attending Penn State for meteorology.

“He was extraordinarily bright,” says Mary Anne of her husband, a first-generation college student. The couple, married 61 years, funded a scholarship for students in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. After their son Bill ’90 Lib was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2009, the Cahirs helped to create the Project Cahir Endowment, which funds Penn State scholarships in Bill’s memory.

Cahir (RA), 90, died June 6, 2024, in State College. Besides his wife, he is survived by children Ellen, Kathryn, and Bart ’94 EMS. —Meri-Jo Borzilleri