Francis Henry Vittek, a Baltimore County Police Department colonel who — as a promising younger catcher — was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, died of issues from an an infection July 12 at Brightview Bel Air, a senior dwelling group. He was ten days in need of his ninety fifth birthday.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Overlea, he was the son of Frank Vittek, chief inspector of weights and measures for Baltimore County, and Emma Steidle, a homemaker.
He was a graduate of Kenwood High School, the place he was a catcher on the baseball crew. He was recruited by each the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers after his 1946 commencement.
After going by way of coaching at a Dodgers minor league camp in Cambridge on the Eastern Shore, he developed shoulder issues that sidelined his baseball profession.
Mr. Vittek enlisted within the Army and was assigned to a Tokyo navy hospital as a reconditioning officer.
“He had very fond memories of his time in Japan and was so happy to have met General Douglass MacArthur, who had toured the hospital in Tokyo,” mentioned his daughter, Amy Grace of Jarrettsville. “He also was able to travel to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
He later served through the Korean War and was once more assigned to Japan.
While working briefly at Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., he met his future spouse, M. Kathleen Krach.
Mr. Vittek joined the Baltimore County Police Department in February 1957 and have become a patrolman in Parkville.
By 1965 he was one of many supervisors within the division’s recruiting and cadet program.
“With the influx of population and industry to Baltimore County, not only must the regular police force grow, but so must the cadet program,” he mentioned in a 1965 Sun story.
After being a commander answerable for the county’s crime lab, he turned supervisor of dispatching police and hearth calls. He superior by way of the ranks in his 29 years on the division and retired as a colonel.
In a 1984 Associated Press story printed in The Baltimore Sun he mentioned he thought of pc theft “to be the property crime of the 1980s.”
He informed relations that over time he delivered various infants as a part of his job.
Mr. Vittek was an ardent Orioles and Colts fan.
“My father was the original split-screen guy. When the Orioles and the Colts played on the same Sunday, he stacked a portable black-and-white TV on top of his larger Muntz cabinet model,” mentioned his son, Timothy Vittek. “There had been no clickers in these days and through commercials I used to be delegated to activate the sound from the opposite recreation and switch off the sound from the advert.
“You could describe my father as a man who loved my mother, his kids and being a police officer.”
A funeral service can be held at 11 a.m. Monday on the Schimunek Funeral Home of Bel Air Inc., 610 W. MacPhail Road in Bel Air.
Survivors embrace his daughters, Kathleen Stern of Belcamp, Claire Infussi of Bel Air and Amy Grace of Jarrettsville; two sons, Timothy Vittek of Sarasota, Florida, and Brian Vittek of Belcamp; seven grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. Mr. Vittek’s spouse of 59 years, M. Kathleen Krach, a homemaker, died in 2009.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com