Theodore Henry Knach Sr., a retired stationery company salesman and World War II Navy veteran, died Monday of congestive heart and renal failure at Good Samaritan Hospital.
He was 88.
Mr. Knach was born in Baltimore and raised on East Avenue in Canton. He was a graduate of Patterson Park High School and worked before the war in the shipping department of the old Montgomery Ward catalog store on Monroe Street.
He enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and was trained as a machinist's mate. He served for four years aboard the destroyer USS Conway and the destroyer escort Nauman in the South Pacific.
"My dad liked recounting the following story: While serving on the Nauman in 1944, a typhoon occurred which lasted three days. Three ships in the task force were lost due to 60-foot waves," said a son, Steven Edward Knach of Schenectady, N.Y.
"The Nauman was spared by God's grace. It had just refueled and was sitting low in the water. The ship, which had sustained damage, had to return to Pearl Harbor," he said.
After being discharged in 1946, Mr. Knach worked as a pump operator for a decade at the old Standard Oil Co. refinery in Canton.
In 1958, he went to work as a salesman for the Modern Stationery Co. He retired in 1990.
He was married in 1956 to the former Jane Atherton Hayes, a University Hospital dietitian, whom he had met at a YWCA dance class.
The longtime Govans resident was an avid collector of coins and stamps.
He was a 53-year communicant of St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church, 5502 York Road, Govans, where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 10 a.m. today.
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Knach is also survived by another son, Army Reserve Chaplain Theodore H. Knach Jr. of Timonium; a daughter, Marianne Ruth Wallace of New Freedom, Pa.; and a grandson.
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