Pittsburgh builder and sustainability pioneer Jack Mascaro dies after long illness

Michael Mascaro will never forget the ways his father instilled his indefatigable work ethic into his sons.

“He would get up in the morning and go to work and he would always leave us little dad notes. ‘Hey boys, love ya, have a great day, be good to your mom,’ and there would always be a list of chores,” said Mascaro.

“One summer day when I was eighth or ninth grade, and (brother) Jeff was a junior or senior in high school, he left a note: ‘Hey boys, I got 30 yards of mulch coming today. Have it done by the time I get home, love dad. P.S. I’ll be home by 3.’

“We ate breakfast, got the hell outside and got the chores done.”

The lesson, said Mascaro, was about working hard, treating people right and not being complacent.

“It was his own little way of instilling hard work and discipline into us. It became innate. We just get up and do things now,” he said.

John C. (Jack) Mascaro of Upper St. Clair, CEO of the Mascaro Construction Co. and the builder of some of Pittsburgh’s most iconic modern structures, died Sunday, July 19 after a long illness. He was 75.

The impressive list of structures that Mascaro built or renovated includes Heinz Field, the Children’s Museum, Biomedical Science Tower 3 (a gleaming research facility on the University of Pittsburgh campus), Heinz Hall, the UPMC Sports Performance Complex used by both the Steelers and Pitt Panthers football teams, the Carnegie Mellon Posner Conference Center and the Allegheny County Family Courts Facility, to name a few.

“Every job is special but he was very proud of Heinz Field, Biomedical Science Tower 3, and the adaptive reuse of the former (Allegheny) County Jail, which was turned into a family juvenile courts facility. That was a very special project to him,” said Michael Mascaro.

Jack Mascaro was born in 1944 in Mt. Lebanon. After graduating from South Catholic High School in 1962, he followed in his father’s footsteps and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1966, and later obtained a master’s degree in the same field.

After working for a Pittsburgh-based construction firm for 15 years, he took out a second mortgage on his home and started his own company, Mascaro Construction.

Over 32 years, the company has earned a reputation for being a visionary builder. It’s now run by Jack’s three sons, John, Jeffrey and Michael.

“He always said ‘we don’t want to be the biggest contractor in the area, we just want to be the best at what we do,’ ” Michael Mascaro said. “His philosophy was about good business and good ethics.”

An integral part of Jack Mascaro’s philosophy was sustainability.

“It was his passion for sustainability, and what he saw as its inexorable link to engineering, that will forever inform our mission to create new knowledge for the benefit of the human condition,” said James R. Martin II, U.S. Steel dean of engineering at Pitt.

“He truly was an engineer’s engineer, and we can never thank him and his family enough for his generosity of mind and spirit.”

Indeed Mascaro was not only one of Pitt’s distinguished graduates, but also one of its most generous benefactors.

In 2009, he completed the 22,000-square-foot Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, a LEED Gold certified building, on top of and through the existing two-story basement of the Swanson School of Engineering’s Benedum Hall.

“He had a vision in everything he did,” said Gena Marie Kovalcik, co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation.

“He really was the one who came to the University of Pittsburgh and said, ‘I see this coming. I know green construction and sustainability is going to become more critical, more necessary for our engineering students to understand. I want to invest in it and I want to help Pitt be a leader in it.’ ”

And Mascaro did it all with love, Kovalcik said.

“I adored Jack. He took personal time, even when he was busy with his company, to meet with our students and talk with them. He was hands-on and active with the center through his illness, through all of it. He loved his alma mater and he loved all of us.”

And he loved his family. As busy as he was professionally, Mascaro always found the time to be involved with his sons’ activities, coaching the baseball and football teams they played on.

“The time that he spent with his family was the time that he most cherished and he made sure that it happened,” Michael Mascaro said. “He worked really hard at everything but he was always there for his family.”

He recalled that his dad even worked hard at coaching the seventh-grade youth baseball team, finding unique ways to motivate his players.

“He did old-school stuff. He brought a tape recorder with the soundtrack from ‘Rocky’ and would bring all the kids out on the mound for a motivational speech. And he would play the ‘Rocky’ theme song in the background. We had so much fun with it. We would all get fired up and play. He was great with the kids.”

If there was any way to sum up Jack Mascaro’s life, Michael Mascaro said, it was that his dad was a man filled with passion.

“At the end of the day I believe it goes back to the family, my mom and his love for her, his love for his children and his grandkids. Everything he did was for them,” he said.

“He taught us that giving back to your community, if you’re fortunate and blessed to be able to do so, is our civic duty. So, his heart was always in the right place, whether it was working hard or supporting philanthropic activities. And our passions are to do the same.”

Jack Mascaro is survived by his wife of 53 years, Darlene; their three sons John (Holly), Jeffrey (Michelle) and Michael (Libby); nine grandchildren, John, Anthony, Joey, Justina, Julia, Ashley, Brooke, Ryan, Mary and Abigail; his two brothers, Vince and Peter; one sister, Polly Martin; and many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Peter J. and Jean E. Mascaro, and his sister, Irma Riehl.

Friends may pay their respects on Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Beinhauer Funeral Home, 2828 Washington Road, McMurray. In compliance with CDC guidelines for the coronavirus pandemic, reservations are requested at beinhauer.com; family members are not able to be present.

There will be a private family service followed by burial at Queen of Heaven Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to St. Paul of the Cross, 148 Monastery Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203.