Francis J. Carey Jr., 88, Philadelphia lawyer and investment banker.
He was a philanthropist specializing in education.
NOT MANY people can say part of their life story wound up in a chocolate bar.
But Frank Carey had an imaginative daughter. When he reached the age of 85, his daughter Frances, wrote a blurb about him and inserted it in Hershey chocolate bars.
You opened the wrapper and there was a photograph of a smiling Frank Carey with some little known facts about him, like the time he grew a beard and nobody noticed, that his favorite foods were salmon and asparagus and cake with orange icing, and his favorite movie was "Gone With the Wind."
His favorite saying was: "If you are out of Dewar's, you are out of friends."
And he was an Aries.
There is no doubt that Frank appreciated the message in the candy bar because he had a famous sense of humor, but the work he did for a living was more serious. He was a prominent Philadelphia lawyer, investment banker and philanthropist.
Francis J. Carey Jr., a World War II Navy veteran, a longtime supporter of education, and a loving family man, died Saturday of a pulmonary embolism. He was 88 and lived in Ambler.
He joined the Navy at the age of 16 and served as a communications officer on the cargo ship USS Nicolet in the Pacific Theater. He was discharged in 1946.
Frank was born in Baltimore to a family of lawyers. His father, Francis J. Carey, was a prominent Baltimore corporate attorney, as was his paternal grandfather, Francis King Carey, president of National Sugar Manufacturing Co. of Denver.
His grandmother, Anne Galbraith Carey, was the founder of the Gilman Country School in Baltimore, the first country day school in America. His maternal grandfather, John S. Armstrong, founded Arizona State University.
Frank also claimed descendancy from Samuel Fuller, a Pilgrim who arrived in Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620.
Frank graduated from the Gilman school in 1943. He went on to Princeton University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. After his Navy service, he returned to Penn and earned a law degree.
He served as law secretary to Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice John C. Bell Jr., then joined the Philadelphia law firm of Townsend, Elliott & Munson, which later became Reed Smith LLP.
When his brother, William, founded the real-estate investment firm W.P. Carey Inc. in 1973, Frank joined as a director. After retiring from his law practice, he became president of W.P. Carey.
Trevor Bond, current president and CEO of W.P. Carey, said, "Frank was valued for his solid judgment, his kindness, his sharp wit and his unceasing loyalty to the firm."
Frank married Emily "Bitsy" Norris in 1956. She died in 1997.
He served as life trustee of the Gilman School in Baltimore; president of the board of trustees of Germantown Academy; chairman and CEO of the W.P. Carey Foundation, which was instrumental in the founding of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University and the Francis King Carey School of Law at the University of Maryland.
Frank was senior warden of St. Martin's in the Field Episcopal Church in Biddeford Pool, Maine, where he spent his summers. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the Maryland Historical Society.
He was a member of the Fourth Street Club, a social club in Philadelphia, and the Sunnybrook Golf Club in Plymouth Meeting.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, Francis J. Carey III and H. Augustus Carey; two other daughters, Elizabeth Carey Gregory and Emily N. Carey, and 10 grandchildren.
Services: 11 a.m. Nov. 24 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 610 Church Road, Fort Washington.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the W.P. Carey Foundation, attn. Juliana Harris, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York NY 10020.