William John Wachter passed away Wednesday afternoon, June 10, 2015, at an assisted living facility in Lawrence County. He was 91. He was born July 22, 1923, in Alliance, Ohio, a son of Ferdinand and Helen Ormesher Wachter. He was a member of Beaver High School, class of 1941. Mr. Wachter was a pioneer and inventor in the field of nuclear engineering, World War II veteran, Boy Scouts of America Scoutmaster, church elder, choir member and a Sunday school teacher. In 1998, the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association honored Mr. Wachter as the Tri State Inventor of the Year for Commercial Implementation of Shipboard Nuclear Power Systems and Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Systems. The nomination letter states, "Mr. Wachter's legacy in the registration of creative ideas has produced a depository of acknowledged Intellectual Property that may not be duplicated by any other living inventor in this area. Over a 40 year period, Mr. Wachter has been awarded over 50 patents, 20 of which are classified. His inventions have had a significant impact on the Pittsburgh area because of the engineering efforts and the manufacturing of products generated by these inventions. Today nuclear power is accepted as standard for major naval vessels, and over 27,000 spent fuel cells are safely stored in spent fuel racks of Mr. Wachter's design." All of these inventions were created using a slide rule. For the bulk of Mr. Wachter's engineering career there were no calculators or computers. When calculators did come on the market, Mr. Wachter's lively sense of humor was evident in his comments about them, "Don't trust 'em." He stayed true to his slide rule throughout his life! Mr. Wachter attended the University of Pittsburgh on a football scholarship and joined ROTC. He interrupted his college education to join the World War II effort. Since he had taken an astronomy class in college they made him a navigator. As a lead navigator on B-17s in the 8th Air Force, he flew less than 10 missions before the war ended. "At the end of the war, we were notified that people were starving by the thousands in Holland so part of the 8th Air Force flew mercy missions to drop food. After that we flew to Linz, Austria to pick up survivors from the concentration camps." After the war he returned to Pitt to complete his BS in Mechanical Engineering, worked for Lord Manufacturing in Erie, attained his master's degree in Aerospace Engineering at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve) then went to work for NASA. "One day at NASA they came in and told me that I was going to be a nuclear engineer. Thats how they did it in the early 1950s." Mr. Wachter then worked at Brush Beryllium, as the Senior Nuclear Engineer at Westinghouse Bettis Atomic Power Lab. While in that position, he was an integral part of the design team that produced the first nuclear power plant for use in submarines. In 1967, he founded his own company, Wachter Associates. He provided consultation after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, and served on the presidents technical committee reviewing the September 11th Twin Tower building collapses. He is preceded in death by his wife, Barbara. He is survived by his brother, Robert Wachter, of Washington, D.C. He is survived by five children, William John Wachter Jr. of Pittsburgh, Gretchen Clauser of Braddock, Heidi Wachter of Oakland, Calif., Frederica Hood of New Castle and Anneliese Moeller of Roseville, Calif.; eight grandchildren, William John Wachter III, Kyle Pack, Lucy Pack, Gwyneth Chew, Caitlin Chew, Roslyn Hood, Julian Hood and Caleb Hood; and two great-grandchildren. Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday, June 15, in the J. Bradley McGonigle Funeral Home and Crematory Inc., 111 W. Falls St. Military honors will be rendered by the New Castle Area Honor Guard at 7 p.m. Monday in the funeral home followed by the funeral service with the Rev. Richard Nero, hospice chaplain, officiating.