Schwegler

Benedict Richard Schwegler, Jr., an accomplished scientist and civil engineer, died on December 6, 2025, in Long Beach, CA, at the age of 76.

Ben was born in Cleveland, OH, the eldest child of an attorney and a homemaker. He was inducted into NAC in 2016 for his lifelong career of leadership in sustainable engineering focused on delivering new technologies to improve the quality of the built environment.

Ben was a civil and environmental engineer, a world-renowned expert in commercial fireworks, a national champion sailboat racer, an avid cyclist, and a blues guitarist with an encyclopedic knowledge of blues and rock history. He lived all over the United States and the world: the Midwest, the South, California, China, and France.

As a young man, Ben spent an incredible amount of time outdoors. He backpacked throughout the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, worked as a canoe guide in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, and waded through the swamps of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for his graduate research.

He was a track athlete and won a full scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he ran a 4:19 mile. Initially, Ben assumed he would become a lawyer like his father. But at UT, he saw the brilliant green of chlorophyll-a under a microscope, fell in love with the natural world, and majored in botany.
He spent most of his career - 37 years - at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he was senior vice president and chief scientist for research and development. He often said that his mission at Disney was to "make it safe to have fun;" not just for people, but for the environment too.

His work bridged engineering, environmental science, and the built environment - often focusing on how complex systems like cities and theme parks interact with nature.

Early in his career at Disney, he worked on a water quality project using the hyacinth plant to clean wastewater at Disney's properties in Florida. Later, he developed next-generation "smokeless" fireworks to reduce pollution. Later he founded and led Disney's first research laboratory in China, which focused on understanding integrated infrastructure design to achieve both energy efficiency and "up-cycling" of resources.

But despite his long career in the private sector, in his heart Ben was always an academic. As an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, his research centered on sea level change and integrated infrastructure. He oversaw graduate students, authored dozens of scientific articles and book chapters, was nominated for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and held several US patents.

Ben was a leader in many areas of our industry. He was focused on increased productivity, on innovation, on reliability and efficiency. He was also focused on integrated project delivery before it became popular with others. He enlisted the best and brightest minds in academia to find and implement innovative improvements in the way we do things in design and construction. He led some of the most complex organizations and projects to successful completion.
Despite decades spent traveling around the world and living abroad, Long Beach was always the place he never wanted to leave.

Ben is survived by his wife of 46 years, Jan, daughters Lyzz and Vera, and his granddaughter Frances.

Ben will be missed as a good friend, a member of NAC and as a great engineer and leader.

― Dave Nash and Norb Young, 2026