05/18/2026
It is with a heavy heart and an even fuller one that I share that my beloved husband, Frank Kaminski, Jr., went home to the Lord on May 15th, at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville. He was 70 years old.
Frank was a man of few words and enormous presence. He was quiet and strong, the kind of person who shouldered whatever was placed in front of him without complaint, without performance, and without ever asking for credit. When the work was hard, he did it. When someone needed help, he helped. When life sent him cancer for the first time, years ago, he met it the same way: with steady eyes and quiet faith that whatever came, he would handle it. And he did.
Frank had the courage to choose to battle AML TP53, so he could have more time with his family.
Frank made a career out of his love of welding that started at Bechtel Power Plant. While employed at Air Products & Chemicals for 22 years, for whom he traveled the world.
But if you really want to know who he was, you had to see him with his four granddaughters.
Those girls were the greatest delight of his life. He gave the world's best piggyback rides, and the giggling that followed him around our house and down every beach we ever visited is a sound I will carry with me forever. Every summer we packed up the car and headed to the shore. Ocean City. Virginia Beach. Cape May. He would let those girls drag him onto the sketchiest, rattliest boardwalk roller coaster they could find, and he would ride it again and again because they asked him to. They would steal the hats off his head and run, shrieking with laughter, and he would chase them every single time, pretending to be slower than he was so they could get away. He loved to show the girls how to catch sand crabs, and they would screech with delight when he would put them in their hands.
He loved them so completely. And they knew it. That is one of the great blessings of our family: those girls will grow up knowing exactly what it feels like to be deeply, quietly, unconditionally loved by a good man.
A few weeks ago, after years of being well, we learned he was facing aggressive leukemia. He met that news the way he met everything else in his life: with courage, with grace, and without a word of self-pity. He fought hard. He suffered with dignity. And when it became clear that the Lord was calling him home, he went peacefully, surrounded by the people who loved him most. We all got to say our goodbyes.
We keep returning to a thought that has carried me through these last days, that we are not given more time than we have, only the chance to love well with the time we are given. Frank loved well. He loved deeply, faithfully, and without condition, and our family was the richer for every quiet year we had with him.
Frank is preceded in death by his parents, Frank and Mary Ziebro Kaminski, and nephew, Robert Colburn, Jr.
Surviving is his loving wife of 41 years, Deidre Miller Kaminski, of Edwardsville; step-daughter, Heather Dee Cawley, and Mark Nilon, of Larksville; daughter, Sally Anne Kaminski-Tax, and husband, Matt Tax; granddaughters, Amelia Grace, Celeste Marie, Lyra Clementine and Solara Anne Tax; sisters, Theresa Fraley, and husband Ralph, Chris Weldon, and the late Frances Colburn Shaup; goddaughter, Kelly Herron; as well as nieces and nephews.
Family and friends are invited from 5 to 7 PM on Friday, May 22nd, to Hugh B. Hughes & Son, Inc. Funeral Home, 1044 Wyoming Ave., Forty Fort.
Memorial service will be held at 12 PM on Saturday, May 23rd, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 35 S. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre. Inurnment will be held at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Swoyersville. All who loved him are welcome to join us at St. Stephen's.
Please hold our family, and especially Sally, Heather and our four granddaughters, in your prayers in the days ahead. Your kindness, calls, cards and love these last weeks have already meant more than I can say. He always felt loved.
