Joe Feinberg, founder and longtime owner of the Nutron lighting manufacturing plant that started in New London and now resides at the Norwich Industrial Park, says his career took a major turn after the 1942 Coconut Grove fire in Boston.

Feinberg, who just turned 90, said in an interview a few days before his birthday that the tragic nightclub fire turned the public's attention to the need for emergency lighting. After the fire that killed nearly 500 erupted, club patrons had a difficult time finding the exits, Feinberg recalled, yet manufacturers for years never quite hit on how to solve the problem.

So Feinberg, who studied engineering at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., and went on to be the third electrical engineer hired to work on the USS Nautilus nuclear submarine at Electric Boat, took a crack at the problem. But his initial design turned out to be too expensive to produce — until one day he happened on a small metal-spinning company in Shelton that had just the right shape of housing he was looking for, at a very attractive price.

"That was the start of the business," Feinberg says.

The business started in 1960 in his house on Bayshore Drive in New London. But when the rumbling of trucks threatened to disturb neighbors, Feinberg's wife Phyllis urged him to move.

The company had a succession of New London locations until it settled in 1966 into a building at 33 Pequot Ave. where it could do both assembly work and manufacturing. Then, just as Nutron was outgrowing that building in the late 1990s, Pfizer Inc. offered Feinberg $1 million to move so the New York-based drug company could build its former world research headquarters on the site.

"It was like a godsend," Feinberg, who spent more than 40 years in the business, laughs now. "Pfizer wanted to make it like a college campus, and that's what they did."

The business has continued for more than half a century, concentrating its lighting sales now on luxury office buildings rather than on emergency lighting, which has largely been taken over by low-cost countries such as China. The business now concentrates on energy-efficient LED lighting, said Feinberg's son Jack, now sole owner of Nutron.

Feinberg retired in 2001, three years after the company's move to Norwich. His family hosted a 90th birthday party for Feinberg last week at Great Neck Country Club attended by his large family and many friends.

Earlier, at an interview in his comfortable Sixth District home, Feinberg reminisced about his early life, recalling with fondness his college education at Kings Point.

"They instilled in us the thought of acta non verba — action, not words," he told several dozen guests during his birthday celebration.

Feinberg entered the service in December 1944, just before the end of World War II, and graduated in three years. This year will be his 70th reunion, and he still recalls being part of convoys to England in April and May of 1945, the last of which included ushering a German submarine into port after it had flown the white flag of surrender.

"I've had a lot of good experiences in my life," Feinberg said. "I attribute whatever success I've had to the fact that I was fortunate to be accepted and be a graduate of Kings Point."

A native of Fall River, Mass., Feinberg came to the area originally on a whim when a friend wanted to look into jobs at EB. His friend didn't get hired, but Feinberg, who previously had done engineering work for Texaco, was given a job on the spot, though he hadn't even intended to apply.

He didn't realize until he was handed a thick design-specifications book that he had just been brought aboard to work on on the world's first nuclear-powered submarine.

"It was like reading a Jules Verne novel as far as what they were going to attempt to do," Feinberg laughed.

But, unhappy with the low pay, he spent only half a year at EB before he was snatched up by Link Aviation in Binghamton, N.Y. He worked for a series of companies but was eventually coaxed back to the area by his New London-raised wife, whom he had met while working at EB and married in 1954.

Feinberg is no longer involved in the business, which gave him more time for one of his passions, boating, which he often enjoyed with his "sailing buddy," the late City Manager Frank Driscoll. But failing eyesight has made him give up sailing along with another of his pastimes, golf.

He does have a green thumb, though, and friends are known to stop by to enjoy some of his vegetable harvests. According to family, though, his gentle manner is underlain by a steely determination and strong leadership skills, not to mention the ability to avoid smoking, drinking or cursing.

"No entitlements" and "work hard" are two of the mottos Feinberg lived by, along with "always be under the radar." That's why, said son Jack, that his dad gave up a Mercedes sports car he owned for a short while.

"A leader is about the small things when people aren't watching," said Feinberg's son Bruce.

He mentioned a donation to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston that his father made a few years ago. When asked about it, Feinberg noted that a doctor there had saved him from being a cripple early in life.

"Leadership is example, someone you want to emulate," Bruce said. "(Leaders) inspire those around them to reach their full potential."

l.howard@theday.com