William Frederick Liebenow

William Frederick “Bud” Liebenow, who captained the PT boat that rescued John F. Kennedy after a Japanese destroyer sank the future president’s now-legendary PT-109, died Friday, February 24, 2017, in Mount Airy. He was 97. He died of complications related to pneumonia, said his daughter, Susan T. Liebenow.

Mr. Liebenow joined the Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. During midshipman training, he volunteered for the Navy’s fledgling PT boat service and was accepted. Many of the trainees were experienced sailors, but Mr. Liebenow’s nautical experience until then had been limited to small fishing boats. Still, that was more experience than some of the recruits had. “Most of our training was done at night,” he recounted during an oral-history interview conducted by the John F. Kennedy Library in 2005. “Of course, we started out in the daytime, because a lot of us didn’t know what a boat was.” He eventually was given command of the PT-157.

In August of 1943, Mr. Liebenow’s PT-157 and Kennedy’s PT-109 were among a patrol of four PT boats that attacked three Japanese destroyers near an American base in the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Kennedy’s boat was split in half, and he and his 10 surviving crew members swam to a small island in Japanese-controlled territory. Kennedy scratched a message on a coconut shell asking for rescue and gave it to island natives to carry to the American base. Although warned that the message might be an enemy ruse, Mr. Liebenow and his crew, aided by the natives, set out under cover of darkness and rescued the PT-109 crew from the island.

Later, aboard PT-199, Mr. Liebenow took part in the D-Day invasion of June 1944, first helping with preparations during the preceding weeks through a number of top-secret reconnaissance missions. During the invasion, he and his crew led rocket boats to their assigned beaches and later rescued crew members of the USS Corry, the lead destroyer of the Normandy invasion task force, which was sunk by German artillery fire. Decades later, he was still receiving thank-you letters from the children of some of the men he rescued that day.

After D-Day, his PT boat ran special missions for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, in the English Channel area, delivering personnel and supplies in enemy-occupied territory. It also was used as transport by generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Patton, and other military leaders.

Mr. Liebenow was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor in combat. He also received the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign. He left the Navy in 1947 with the rank of lieutenant commander. He continued to stay in touch with Kennedy, and he and his family were honored guests at the president’s inauguration in 1961.

Although initially hesitant to discuss his wartime experiences, Mr. Liebenow in recent years had been sought after by historians and Kennedy biographers, and he leaves behind a large amount of first-person narrative about World War II, PT boats, and the Kennedy rescue. He appears as a source in several books, most recently In “PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy” by William Doyle, published last year. In the 1963 movie “PT 109,” his character is played by actor Dean Smith.

William Frederick Liebenow, Jr. was born January 18, 1920, in Fredericksburg, VA. His father, William Frederick Liebenow, was in the hardware business and his mother, Mary Eastburn Liebenow, was a homemaker. He graduated from Fredericksburg High School and received a bachelor’s degree from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA, in 1941.

After the war, Mr. Liebenow joined the railroad industry as a chemist. He worked for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, later called CSX Transportation, in several states, retiring as director of environmental engineering and testing in Huntington, WV, after a 30-year career. He and his wife, Lucy Tyler Liebenow, moved to Edenton in 1981 and then to Mount Airy in 2006.

He is survived by his wife, of the home; his son, William Michael Liebenow of Winlock, WA; his daughter, of Arlington, VA; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. In addition to his parents, Mr. Liebenow was preceded in death by two sisters, Edith Lewis and Frances Armstrong; and a brother, Franklin E. Liebenow.

A celebration of life will be held Saturday, March 4, 2017, from 11:00 until 1:00 PM at Ridgecrest Retirement Community, 1000 Ridgecrest Lane, Mount Airy. Military honors will be conducted at noon by Patrick County VFW Memorial Honor Guard.

Moody Funeral Services in Mount Airy is serving the family.