Gilbert R. Funk Sr., a retired Allied Bendix Aerospace manager and World War II combat veteran, died of pneumonia Wednesday at Stella Maris Hospice. The Overlea resident was 86.

Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, he was a 1939 City College graduate. He earned a diploma at the old Baltimore College of Commerce.

He worked for Bendix Corp. throughout his life. During World War II, he served in the Coast Guard aboard the USS Cavalier, an attack transport in the Pacific. He fought at Luzon, Leyte Gulf, Tinian and Saipan.

After the war, he resumed work at Bendix at its East Joppa Road plant. A corporate financial manager, he retired in 1986.

He enjoyed camping, fishing and canoeing with his family on annual vacations along the Atlantic Coast and in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He was an amateur sculptor and created clay and plaster figures of seafarers and cowboys.

His wife of 59 years, the former Catherine Cecelia Joyce, died in 2006.

"He often said, 'I was the luckiest one of all because I married your mother,'" said his son, James G. Funk of Forest Hill about his father. "In many ways they were opposites, but in the things that mattered the most, they were on the same page."

A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 9 a.m. Monday at St. Ursula Roman Catholic Church, 8801 Harford Road.

Survivors include three other sons, Raymond M. Funk of Sarasota, Fla., Stephen E. Funk of Parkville and Gilbert R. Funk Jr. of Rockville; six daughters, Kathleen Wilson of State College, Pa., Linda Brenegan of Baltimore, Joyce Parks of Satellite Beach, Fla., Sueanne F. Spivey of Overlea, Deborah Funk of Baltimore and Mary Patricia "Patti" Ginter of Baltimore; 16 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.