William E. Scull Jr.; worked on missiles for RCA

For William E. Scull Jr., tracking test missile flights for RCA while stationed on Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific in the 1960s was no hardship.

"He was having the time of his life," said his daughter, Sandra Plunkett.

"He would get on a small plane every morning and fly up the atoll to get to work, probably a 20-minute commuter flight" to another piece of the atoll, she said.

Mr. Scull worked on Kwajalein as a project engineer from 1964 to 1966 and as the project manager there from 1968 to 1970, with a two-year break for an RCA assignment near Boston.

It helped that he was living out there with his wife, Elinor, and their children, Sandra and William A., both in elementary school when they arrived from South Jersey in 1964.

"There were no cars. Everybody got around on bicycles," Plunkett recalled.

"There was no television at all" in the years before satellite TV. "The movies we got were at least five years old."

So when they returned to stateside schools, she said, she and her brother were far ahead of their classmates.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, Mr. Scull, 90, died at his home in the retirement community of Medford Leas.

In autobiographical notes, Mr. Scull wrote that the RCA operation used radar to track intercontinental ballistic missile flights shot from California and targeted for the Kwajalein lagoon, which is surrounded by a necklace of small islands.

"Part of the adventure," Plunkett recalled, "was that when they would sound sirens in the middle of the night, we would have to get up and seek shelter in a concrete building.

"There could be falling debris when they shot missiles up to intercept" every incoming missile, she said.

"The first year, we were in an aluminum trailer, the second half of the first tour in a concrete duplex."

Mr. Scull, born in Wilmington, N.C., earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Maryland and studied business at the University of Pennsylvania while working for RCA.

Mr. Scull began his career in 1946 as a design engineer of TV sets for RCA in Camden and held three patents jointly with RCA for the TVs' improvements.

When he returned to South Jersey in 1970, he wrote in his notes, he worked on the Aegis Combat System, whose radar "could track 100 targets at the same time."

He retired as the Aegis site manager in 1987.

In the 1970s, his daughter said, he was president of the board of deacons and of the board of trustees at Haddonfield Presbyterian Church, where he was an elder.

Besides his daughter, Mr. Scull is survived by his wife of 65 years, Elinor; son William A.; a sister; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service was set for 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, in the Holly Room at Medford Leas, off Route 70 near Haynes Creek Lane.

Donations may be sent to www.haddonfieldpres.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at http://kainmurphy.com.