Lt. Col. Anthony George Brozena Sr., a retired Air Force officer and NASA aeronautical engineer, died of heart failure Sunday at the Hamilton home where he had lived for 50 years. He was 95.
Colonel Brozena was born and raised in Plymouth, Pa., and graduated from Plymouth High School in 1929. While attending Pennsylvania State University's campus in Wilkes-Barre, he worked in the region's anthracite coal mines.
He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1935 and later became a flight engineer and instructor on B-24 bombers. During World War II, he was assigned to the Philippines and flew reconnaissance flights.
Colonel Brozena retired from the Air Force in 1961, and the next day he began working as an aeronautical engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. He retired a second time in 1979.
In 1947, he married Rosemary Piscotty. In 1956, they moved to a home on Rueckert Avenue.
"He met his wife when he was in the Air Force, and then they found out they were from the same hometown," said a daughter, Teresa M. Greenberg of Manchester.
Colonel Brozena, who was a member of the Polish Alliance, enjoyed researching his family's Polish heritage, working on home-improvement projects and gardening.
He was a communicant for 60 years of St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church, 5310 Harford Road, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered yesterday.
In addition to his wife and daughter, survivors include a son, Anthony G. Brozena Jr. of Albuquerque, N.M.; two other daughters, Mary Louise Brozena of Portsmouth, N.H., and Ann Butrow of Bel Air; and two grandchildren.