Edwin A. Schultz, 86, retired naval engineer at Navy Yard

Edwin A. Schultz, 86, of Plymouth Meeting, a retired naval engineer, died of lung disease Tuesday, Jan. 3, at Mercy Suburban Hospital.

From the early 1960s until retiring in 1990, Mr. Schultz was with the Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station at the Philadelphia Navy Base. His last position there was as senior project engineer, responsible for the oxygen- and nitrogen-generating plants that support life aboard aircraft carriers and submarines.

Mr. Schultz graduated at age 17 from Olney High School in 1942. He loaded freight cars until he was drafted into the Army at 18.

During World War II, he served as a combat engineer with the Third Army in Europe. In April 1945, he participated in the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

Mr. Schultz, whose Jewish parents had emigrated from the Ukraine, spoke Yiddish to the Germans he encountered and was amused when they questioned his dialect. He told his family he proudly responded, "Ich bin Jude."

After the war, he earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from what is now Drexel University in 1955 while caring for his ill mother. He then worked for chemical companies in Butler County, Pa., and Tuscola, Ill.

In 1959, he returned to the Philadelphia area and was an engineer with a division of Philco Corp. in Lansdale before taking a position at the Navy Base.

A Mason, Mr. Schultz was past master of Montgomery Lodge 19. He was a supporter of abortion rights and for years escorted women past antiabortion protesters at Planned Parenthood and the Philadelphia Women's Center.

An enthusiastic correspondent, he would wake up in the middle of the night to write letters to family members or to newspapers. The Inquirer published his letters on a variety of topics, including politics, strife in the Middle East, growing up in the Depression, and butterflies.

Mr. Schultz, an avid naturalist, believed that reforestation, even on city streets, would vastly reduce the impacts of carbon dioxide and thermal radiation. His motto was "Plant a tree and bless the shade," his family said.

He is survived by a daughter, Gail Scoufield; two grandsons; and two great-granddaughters. His wife of 53 years, Selma Thomas Schultz, died in 2009.

A Masonic service will be at 10:45 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, followed by a funeral at 11, at Levine & Sons Memorial Chapel, 4737 Street Rd., Trevose. Burial will be in Montefiore Cemetery, Jenkintown.

Donations may be made to Jefferson Foundation, Department of Pulmonary and Infectious Diseases, 925 Chestnut St., Suite 110, Philadelphia 19107.