Leo P. Duffy, the first Assistant Secretary for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management, died on Sunday in Mechanicsburg, PA. He was 97.

Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, under Energy Secretary James D. Watkins, Duffy was asked to lead the effort to fix the “environmentally scarred nuclear weapons production complex,” creating a new office to lead the cleanup at 35 major US nuclear facilities and 3300 hazardous waste sites. W. Henson Moore, former DOE deputy secretary and former deputy White House chief of staff, said “Leo was the only man in America who could have done the job.”

Duffy initially joined the DOE in 1989 as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy; his appointment was rumored to have been delayed for years by representatives of the “weapons complex” with M&Os (Management and Operating/Operations contracts) when Duffy’s approach did not meet their expectations.

The start of his tenure coincided with a low point in DOE’s environmental history as the FBI raided DOE’s Rocky flats, CO., plant, the result of allegations of criminal waste and safety violations.

After joining DOE, Duffy initiated a plan to dispatch “tiger teams,” small, specialized, cross-functional groups of experts across US nuclear facilities, to help determine a strategic approach. The resulting comprehensive five-year plan for waste clean-up/management was something new, opening up DOE’s long-secret budgets. Duffy said this won him many new friends on Capitol Hill. “Leo never tried to shovel us a lot of baloney,” Sen. John H. Glenn had said of him.

In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, he had been an advisor under Admiral H.G. Rickover, who established the Nuclear Quality Assurance program, where Leo developed the initial Pressure Water Reactor design for the US Navy ships and became the Training Officer for crews on naval submarines.

One of his favorite Rickover stories involved the Admiral berating him until he stopped and said, “I don’t know why I’m yelling at you, Duffy. I ought to be yelling at your mother and father. It’s their fault.”

Leo could be an imposing man, a six-foot tall “black Irishman” with strong opinions he wasn’t afraid to share, and he held his own with the admiral. “If I say it, people believe that’s how I feel,” he said. “I’m not going to kowtow to anyone politically.”

Rickover gave him an opportunity to create something from nothing – setting up a new school for senior naval officers for training in “the Rickover method.” After 1978, the Ship’s

Material Readiness Course for Senior Naval Officers “became a ticket-punching requirement for anyone who wanted to make admiral.”

Prior to his government service, Duffy was an Executive Vice President at Roy F. Weston Corporation, directing corporate services in nuclear waste treatment and environmental services marketing. He had previously worked as the General Manager, Strategic Operations division of the Westinghouse Nuclear Power Co. Steam Generator Technology Service over the design and development of nuclear plant analysis and control systems, plant simulator design and operator training worldwide for all Westinghouse PWR plants.

Leo’s work at DOE earned him the prestigious Engineering News-Record Man of the Year in 1993, cited as a “taskmaster and visionary bringing order and urgency to the massive repair of long-shrouded environmental damage at US weapon factories.” In 2014, he received the Dixy Lee Ray Award, which recognizes significant achievements in the broad field of environmental protection.

Before finally retiring, Leo was a principal with The Duffy Group, a management consulting firm based in West Chester, PA, and Washington, DC, providing strategic guidance to US DOE and major contractors in management, financial and tactical plans concerning environmental management on civilian and government initiatives.

Leo was a focused, intense workhorse with a sense of humor and love of family that was evident in how he spoke of his wife Kathleen, his children and grandchildren. In retirement, he and Kathleen traveled the world, and visited their grandchildren from Alaska to Nebraska to Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida. He was an avid reader, something he and Kathleen instilled in each of their children. He loved history, architecture and the occasional police procedural, in addition to the volumes of government paperwork and management books. He was notorious for carrying a briefcase bursting with reading material on all his business trips. He is quoted as having asked his wife for a reading light in his coffin so he could make sketches on the lid.

In addition to his reading, Duffy authored more than 40 scientific, engineering, technical and public policy issues on environmental, nuclear energy, decontamination and decommissioning strategy for nuclear and toxic facilities, economic analysis on nuclear energy and solid municipal waste, energy and disposal facilities.

A graduate of St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Jersey City, NJ, and New York University with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Leo always remained a Jersey boy at heart, retaining a softened version of his accent to the end.

Preceded in death by his wife of 71 years, Kathleen (Gogarty), his parents Leo P. and Elizabeth (Hanley), and his sister Florence Vryn, Leo is survived by his six children, James,

Michael (Catie Miller), Eileen (Mark Davis), John, Maryann (John Almand) and Maureen (Greg Zimmerman); 20 grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, May 16, at 11:00 am in St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, 410 E. Simpson Street, Mechanicsburg. Burial will be in Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City, NJ at the convenience of the family. A viewing will be held on Saturday from 10:00 am - 11:00 am in the church.