Reedville, VA – Edward Franklin “Frank”, Moriarty, Jr. of Reedville, Va. died on July 19, 2017 of heart disease at the age of 79. A native of Six Corners neighborhood in Springfield, Mass. and son of Edward F. Moriarty, Sr. and Catherine Barry-Moriarty, Frank exercised his entrepreneurial talents as a bar owner before entering real estate as a developer and building contractor, a profession that took him around the United States. He married Carol Mann of Westfield, Mass. in February 1960, eventually moving his family to Maryland and retiring to the Virginia Tidewater area.
For his friends and family, Frank demonstrated his culinary skills, able to quickly create a gourmet meal with as few or as many ingredients available at the time, while entertaining family members and guests with stories that highlighted his amazing and unique sense of humor, always dispensing new jokes and anecdotes designed to encourage laughter from those around him. He demonstrated his unwavering enthusiasm and “joie de vivre” that kept him open to all possibilities for adventures that, in turn , became fodder for the tales he loved telling his children and grandchildren, and anyone else who’d listen.
A voracious reader, he cultivated passion for Irish Literature and Culture and could recite passages from Yeats, Pearce and Heaney. He loved the sea, animals, classical music, history, and politics, and enjoyed rousing discussions on all topics. In business and in his personal life, Frank treated everyone with respect and dignity and he often tried to employ workers who were down on their luck and who ran out of chances and established a reputation for treating everyone, regardless of status, with dignity and respect.
Frank poured his greatest love and passion into his family, the people he cared the most for, the motivation behind his hard work for any of the businesses he launched and sustained. He worked selflessly to support and advance his family, and when called upon, offered thoughtful, supportive and valuable life lessons and advice along the way. His perpetual sunny attitude and optimism, his ability to use stories to convey points and ideas, made him a dearly beloved “Pop-Pop” to his grandchildren and an invaluable positive force for his children.
He is survived by his wife, Carol of 57 years; three siblings, Greg Moriarty, Kathy Palermo, and Suzanne Kelly; three children, Eileen Grant, Edward Franklin Moriarty, III, and Thomas Moriarty and wife, Cassie; eight grandchildren, Jason Grant and wife, Sarah, Katie Grant, Jordan Moriarty, Saige Moriarty, Keli Moriarty, Keegan Moriarty, Ryan Moriarty, and Gracie Moriarty; and two great- grandchildren, Ella Grant and Hazel Grant. He joins his son, the late John Canty.
His legacy will forever live on through the stories he has left behind with all of us that he has touched, and will forever live on in all of our hearts.
A memorial will be planned in the Washington, D. C. area at a later date.
