Longtime Captain From SW Florida
Grant Haven, longtime captain of three private Southwest Florida keys yacht charter and winner of numerous deep-sea fishing competitions in the Bahamas and a World War II veteran, died Aug. 7 of cancer. He was 80.
Known by friends and family as "The Captain," Haven was instrumental in the 1995 opening of Deering Bay Marina, where he worked until recently as head dockmaster and marina manager.
A lover of all things nautical, Haven's daughter-in-law Grace Haven said his Weston home was decorated with lighthouses and a nine-foot-tall model sailboat one might see on display in a seafood restaurant.
Haven was born Dec. 27, 1925, in Spring Lake, N.J. In 1944, before completion of his senior year of high school, he enlisted in the Naval Air Corp to become one of the youngest Pacific gunners during World War II, according to his sister, Doris Ditto. He also participated in low-altitude bombings over Okinawa in the mid-1940s. After the end of World War II, Haven, an electronics buff, graduated from the RCA Institute and worked for Trad, one of America's first TV production companies. Haven married Elizabeth Norris, the mother of his first two children, Ronald and Nanette. But after the couple split up in the late 1950s, Haven moved to South Florida and got a job as a mate on Three Rings, which entertained clients of Ballantine Brewing Co. It was around this time that Haven met his second wife, Barbara Petersen, a boat owner and avid sailor The couple had a daughter, Lisa. From the early 1970s to late '80s, Haven captained the Symbol IV owned by a Gillette executive. Haven's passion for the waters went deep -- he was an avid fisherman. In 1988, Haven began working as captain on two Southwest Florida yacht charter owned by Miami developer Armando Codina: Ana Li and What a Country. Later he signed on to help prepare Deering Bay Marina for its 1995 opening. Lisa Verde said her father's connections to boat owners and various marinas were instrumental in selling the million-dollar slips at Deering Bay -- he was better at it than the hired salespeople, she said. A grandfather several times over, it was his grandchildren who gave him a new lease on life after Haven was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. He shared his passion for the water with them, taking them fishing and boating.
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