Frank Valenti
Engine Dept./Voyage Coordinator

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Frank J, Valenti, an early graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, a World War II merchant officer, and a long-time Project Liberty Ship volunteer, died December 5, 2008, at his home in Glenside, Pennsylvania. He was 84.

A life member of Project Liberty Ship, Frank was born in the Bronx, New York, grew up in Philadelphia, and later enrolled at Kings Point. After graduating as a third assistant engineer, he shipped out in 1944 and continued to sail until 1946. He remembered being marooned in an old broken-down Hog Islander ship in the middle of the Atlantic, drifting without power for two weeks until spotted by a destroyer.

From 1946 until he retired in 1988, he worked in sales and marketing for the mining and steel industry, visiting 82 countries on business. He claimed to be the oldest Kings Point graduate ever to be married in the campus chapel. His second marriage took place there in 1996, when he was 72.

He became a volunteer on the BROWN in 1989 and worked in the restoration of the ship. He remembered cleaning out the shaft alley, the boilers and the bilges, all dirty but necessary tasks, and sailed as part of the engine department. His long business experience led him later to take on an invaluable role as the coordinator of special events for Project Liberty Ship. One of his most notable and challenging assignments was organizing port visits to nine Great Lakes ports in the U.S. and Canada and three Living History Cruises during the voyage to and from the Great Lakes in 2000.

Frank was a 60-year resident of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Survivors include his wife, Catherine Eagan Valenti; two sons, Mark F. Valenti and William Valenti; two daughters, Mary Ellen Kuriger and Elizabeth Ann Leitch; 12 grandchildren and three step-sons. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Maureen Maher Valenti, and another son, Frank J. Valenti, Jr.