Cyril Francis Meenan as a Loyola student, circa 1930.


SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE


How my grandfather’s accidental invention made him an early pioneer of the sustainability movement • BY MICHAEL P. MURPHY


When my grandpa, Cyril Francis Meenan, came up to Loyola from Rock Island in 1928, his intention was not to become a pioneer in green technology. He hoped to be- gin a career in law and to develop his formidable skills as a musician. Still, one never knows how the road of life will weave and wind, and my grandpa’s experience resonates with many who came of age in difficult times. The list is long in human history of inventions or


discoveries that were the result of a “happy accident” or unexpected twist of fate. My grandfather’s Combusto- Jet, which optimized boiler efficiency and reduced air pollution in large-scale heating systems, was one such in- vention. That it would end up heating much of industrial


Chicago and beyond in the latter half of the 20th century is all that much more of a marvel. But Cyril’s story is also a tale in an Ignatian key: the journey of a prayerful pilgrim responding to a series of “cannonball moments,” the kind of which engender a breed of grit and innovative spirit needed to become the author of seven patents and a true energy pioneer. Fundamentally, the Combusto-Jet was a product born


of the Great Depression. Like many students in Chicago (then and now), my grandpa worked as he went to school, moonlighting for a heating company and selling boilers on the side. By 1931, times became so difficult that my grandpa was forced to leave Loyola in the middle


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