Staten Island Advance (New York)
March 25, 2007 Sunday
FRANCIS KOELLNER, 89
SECTION: OBITS; Pg. A11
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Francis (Frank) A. Koellner, a lifetime Sunnyside resident, Staten Island history buff and a former chief shipping clerk for Maersk in Newark, N.J., died early yesterday in his home after a long bout with cancer. He was two weeks away from his 90th birthday.
Mr. Koellner was reared across the street from the home in which he died. An avid woodworker, he built the home himself before his family moved there in 1951.
An enthusiast of Staten Island history, he imparted much of his knowledge of the borough to his children and grandchildren, the source of his greatest joy, his family said.
Mr. Koellner was also the oldest active alumnus of the former Augustinian Academy on Grymes Hill, where he graduated in 1936. Afterward, he attended Manhattan College, earning an engineering degree before enlisting in the Army in 1943.
He served as the priority civilian chief in the enlisted reserve in Washington state, and had the rank of sergeant major when he left the reserve in 1946.
Mr. Koellner married the former Katherine Krebbs three years later.
He worked as a sales representative for automobile makers Packard, Cadillac and General Motors before taking a job with Maersk in 1960. He retired in 1991, at the age of 75.
Tom Conway, president of the Augustinian Alumni Association, said Mr. Koellner always attended alumni meetings and was a wealth of knowledge about the Grymes Hill school.
“We were always taught when we went to school to be Augustinian gentlemen,” said Conway. “He truly defined what it was to be an Augustinian gentleman.”
In addition to his wife of 57 years, Mr. Koellner is survived by his daughters, Joyce Flattry and Deborah Bruni; sons Jay and Gregory Koellner and nine grandchildren.
The funeral will be Tuesday from the Harmon Funeral Home, West Brighton, with a mass at 10 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Counsel R.C. Church, Tompkinsville, followed by burial in Moravian Cemetery, New Dorp.
LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2007
