Frank Anton Orban III

Frank Anton Orban III died on Thursday, October 10, 2024, after a courageous battle with lymphoma. He was the loving husband of Anne and father of his beloved children Sarah and Michael: Sarah O. Salati of New Rochelle, NY and her three children Lucian, Theodore and Mary, and Michael M. A. Orban of Sydney, Australia. He is also survived by his loving sisters, Michel Orban of Paoli, PA and Susan Eichler (Eric) of Malvern, PA. Frank was an internationally recognized lawyer, businessman, academic and senior US diplomat. He was born in 1944 in Johnstown, PA, the son of Attorney Frank A. Orban Jr. and Mary Servicky Orban. Frank grew up in Somerset, PA and attended boarding school at The Hill School in Pottstown, PA where he earned the academic distinction of Head of School. He went on to Harvard University (BA Honors) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (JD). Frank will be remembered for his brilliance earned through intellectual curiosity and hard work, his integrity evidenced in all his personal and professional interactions, and for his generosity exemplified by the many times that he came unsolicited to aid people in need. Frank always found time throughout his busy professional life to mentor an impressive group of young men and women who benefitted from his sage counsel and who have gone on to be great contributors to society. Those who knew Frank appreciated his warmth, wit and sense of humor. From a very young age Frank was interested in the larger world and read voraciously about foreign countries and cultures. He had a classical education with five years of Latin and Greek which led to him winning one of his two scholarships to Harvard – one a competitive prize scholarship in Greek and Latin prose and poetry translation. At Harvard he majored in Political/Soviet Studies and the Russian language. His professors at Harvard included Henry Kissinger and Harvey Mansfield. In law school he concentrated on international and comparative law. During his legal career, he lectured on law and foreign affairs around the world and published numerous articles. Frank liked to say he lived a fortunate life and part of that fortunate life was service to his country and the cause of peace. He lived the history of his time and made life-long friends wherever he worked and lived. In 1968, as a newly minted law school graduate and after being admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar, he was recruited by the Peace Corps to work in the Attorney General’s Office of the Kingdom of Swaziland (Eswatini) for King Sobuza II when this last British Colony in Africa gained its independence. During his time in Swaziland his work was to bring the laws of the Kingdom into compliance with its new constitutional status. Frank also realized the need for a national museum to preserve the country’s history and helped to raise funds to hire its first director. During the 1970s, Frank was active in Soviet-American trade with SATRA Corporation, an American global trading company through which, at that time, 90% of all Soviet-US trade passed. For SATRA, he advised on business opportunities from East Africa to Tokyo, and was present as a host and escort for the first high-level delegation of Soviet Ministers to visit the United States -- the first concrete steps towards détente. While attending an off-Broadway theatre in New York city he met the theater’s manager, the blithe, multi-talented Australian, Gillian Anne Joseph. It was ‘boy meets girl’ over box office and they were engaged three months later. Their married life began in Hamburg, Germany where Frank served as Managing Director of SATRA’s continental European operations. In that capacity, he found himself starting a car business that became very successful with the importation of Soviet Fiat 124 automobiles, called Lada, into West Germany and West Berlin. His wife said that he knew the names of all the parts of a car in German but had little idea what they meant in English. Expecting their first child, Frank and Anne returned to the US where he had the opportunity to take up law again. He taught at the University of Virginia Law School and worked for a firm that, with his entrepreneurial initiative, did major legal policy studies for the US government including the first White House Study on Product Liability Law. In 1980, Frank joined Armstrong World Industries at their global headquarters in Lancaster, PA to be international legal counsel. Over a couple of decades, Frank negotiated many overseas acquisitions and also Armstrong’s joint ventures in the People’s Republic of China. In the mid-eighties, Frank was appointed by the Reagan Administration to a senior diplomatic post as one of the negotiators with the bilateral US-Soviet Nuclear Arms & Space Talks in Geneva, Switzerland. He ruefully commented that successful negotiations were “making the world safe for conventional warfare”. At the end of the Reagan Administration, Frank left Government and became General Counsel of Rupert Murdoch’s European holding company News International PLC until he brought his family back to the US and returned to US corporate legal practice and later to private international law firm practice in Washington DC with the firm of deKieffer & Horgan. While working in DC, he was asked to become Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC, a graduate school of foreign policy, where he led its successful accreditation as an independent degree-granting graduate school. Following his retirement, Frank devoted his professional talents, primarily pro bono, to persons of limited income and to non-profits. Frank became a Knight Magisterial in the now nine hundred-and-eleven-year-old Catholic lay Order, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. He became the first Secretary and General Counsel for its international relief agency branch, Malteser International Americas, in the Western Hemisphere. Supporting other Christian brethren, Frank was also a legal adviser for US projects for the Greek Orthodox Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi in Mt. Athos, founded in the 10th century. Frank was a Director and one of the charter members of the American Association of Corporate Counsel (now Association of Corporate Counsel) helping to lead its efforts to internationalize the Association. He also served as a Director of the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Washington, DC, as a member of the US State Department’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law, and a member/officer of many other professional, cultural and business organizations. An avid traveler, up until the last year of his life, Frank had visited or worked in circa 150 countries. He was a keen hiker, fly fisherman, cook and movie, opera and Asian art buff; all pastimes he shared with his wife of 52 years. Frank lived an exemplary life in striving for excellence in all that he did, in always seeking the good in people and in doing good himself. The family will greet friends for a Viewing at The Groffs Family Funeral Home, 528 West Orange Street, Lancaster, PA on Friday evening, October 18, 2024, from 4:00-6:00 p.m. Frank’s Mass of Christian burial will be held at Saint Joseph Catholic Church, 441 St. Joseph Street, Lancaster on Saturday, October 19, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. with Father Allan Wolfe celebrating. Interment will follow immediately after the Mass at St. Joseph’s new Catholic Cemetery, 170 Charles Road, Lancaster. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Frank’s name to Malteser International Americas (https://orderofmaltarelief.org), 1011 First Avenue, Suite 1322, New York, NY 10022. Also, since the public library in Somerset PA opened Frank’s mind to the world, please consider a contribution in Frank’s name to The Lancaster Public Library (https://lancasterpubliclibrary.org/donate) or to your local public library.