Frank Miles Day 2d, 85, peace activist

Frank Miles Day 2d, 85, chairman of the Philadelphia Friends Peace Committee from 1970 to 1974, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease Dec. 31 at White Horse Village, a retirement community in Newtown Square.

Mr. Day shared the same names as a grandfather, the Philadelphia architect Frank Miles Day, but was the son of Kenneth Day and referred to himself as F. Miles Day.

Mr. Day was a transportation engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad and a successor, Conrail, from 1954 until 1984, when he retired as a manager of facilities and service planning.

But he was better known for his peace activism.

A daughter, Jeannie Roggio, said he was a member of Haverford Friends Meeting for 48 years who became an activist opposing the Vietnam War.

An April 1971 Inquirer article reported that he was one of six people for whom the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal suit demanding the destruction of 18,000 files of the Philadelphia Police Department.

The suit, against Mayor James H.J. Tate and several top city officials, contended that the files, containing information gathered at public gatherings, were "separate from police investigations or records connected with criminal offenses or arrests."

David Rudovsky, the ACLU lawyer in that case, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting v. Tate, recalled last week that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit "found that the dissemination, but not the collection, of the information on political activities was unconstitutional."

Rudovsky said that "the city agreed to pay the plaintiffs money damages," but he could not recall the amount.

Twenty years later, Mr. Day was still going.

In January 1991, Mr. Day was near the Liberty Bell at a demonstration against the impending Gulf War, part of a nationwide protest.

"This is different" from Vietnam-era demonstrations, he told an Inquirer reporter, "because the people have the opportunity to oppose it in advance - not after thousands are dead and our country is committed."

After his retirement from Conrail, Mr. Day was from 1989 to 1994 the chairman of the Octavia Hill Association, which, since 1896, has owned, renovated, and built affordable housing in Germantown, Kensington, and Manayunk as well as in its home base of Society Hill and Queen Village.

Mr. Day's daughter said that in retirement, he journeyed in his 27-foot Cape Dory diesel-powered sailboat from the Jersey Shore to several Caribbean islands.

For the 1988 Australian Bicentennial, she said, Mr. Day was a member of the crew that sailed a tall ship from Tasmania around Cape Horn to England.

Mr. Day graduated from Fresnal Ranch School near Yuma, Ariz., in 1942, earned a mechanical-engineering degree in an accelerated program at the California Institute of Technology in 1945, and served in the Navy in the Pacific.

Mr. Day lived in Wayne from 1962 to 1981 and in Center City until 1999, when he moved to White Horse Village.

Besides his daughter Jeannie, Mr. Day is survived by his wife of 61 years, Doris; a son, Kenneth; daughters Susanna Creely and Mia Burroughs; a sister; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

A memorial was set for 2 p.m. Jan. 30 at Haverford Friends Meeting, 855 Buck Lane, Haverford.