VALENTINE N. BIEG, LCDR, USN

Valentine Bieg '10

Date of birth: October 24, 1889

Date of death: August 24, 1921

Age: 31

Lucky Bag

From the 1910 Lucky Bag:

Valentine Nicholas Bieg

Alexandria, Virginia

"Bugs," "Val," "Bloody Jimmie," "Goulali"

Young Val is a typical Hun
Who always is up to some fun.
He imports a new chance
Every time there's a dance.
And loses his head to each one

YOU just can't help loving Val. A regular little hard guy, he is always ready for a rough-house, and takes great delight in relating his adventures at Atlantic City with Happy Hein. He wouldn't make a liberty at "Bothun," because they couldn't savvy that peculiar style of monkey dialect he uses in conversation. "Speaking tube" man of the Chicago's "Bloody Muttoneers." In hospital seven months in two years. Nevertheless, with his usual ease Bugs fooled 'em all. He is a good deal of a fusser in a quiet way, but occasionally grows enthusiastic over some fair one and spends all his two-bit pieces telephoning Washington or Baltimore to get her down for the next hop. As he is a Crabtownite, he knows every one in the delightful burg, and when on the grade is the recipient of many boxes of fudge and other eats. He loves to join the hunch in a rhino session, and when he gets excited his eyes open so wide that only good luck keeps them from falling out. Insists that his heard has been worrying him for three years, but is, notwithstanding, immensely elated if anyone notices it. Between shaves he uses his razor to sharpen pencils with.

A line, manly little fellow, with lots of grit and nerve, he is a true friend and a pleasant companion.

"Pleath, kind thir. I wath doing nothing."

"Thay, Puthy Fath, dot a Thaturday Poth?"

Class Football (1). Yellow 1910. Class Baseball (2). White 1910. Buzzard (a, b)

Valentine Nicholas Bieg

Alexandria, Virginia

"Bugs," "Val," "Bloody Jimmie," "Goulali"

Young Val is a typical Hun
Who always is up to some fun.
He imports a new chance
Every time there's a dance.
And loses his head to each one

YOU just can't help loving Val. A regular little hard guy, he is always ready for a rough-house, and takes great delight in relating his adventures at Atlantic City with Happy Hein. He wouldn't make a liberty at "Bothun," because they couldn't savvy that peculiar style of monkey dialect he uses in conversation. "Speaking tube" man of the Chicago's "Bloody Muttoneers." In hospital seven months in two years. Nevertheless, with his usual ease Bugs fooled 'em all. He is a good deal of a fusser in a quiet way, but occasionally grows enthusiastic over some fair one and spends all his two-bit pieces telephoning Washington or Baltimore to get her down for the next hop. As he is a Crabtownite, he knows every one in the delightful burg, and when on the grade is the recipient of many boxes of fudge and other eats. He loves to join the hunch in a rhino session, and when he gets excited his eyes open so wide that only good luck keeps them from falling out. Insists that his heard has been worrying him for three years, but is, notwithstanding, immensely elated if anyone notices it. Between shaves he uses his razor to sharpen pencils with.

A line, manly little fellow, with lots of grit and nerve, he is a true friend and a pleasant companion.

"Pleath, kind thir. I wath doing nothing."

"Thay, Puthy Fath, dot a Thaturday Poth?"

Class Football (1). Yellow 1910. Class Baseball (2). White 1910. Buzzard (a, b)

Loss

Valentine was lost on August 24, 1921 when the British-built airship R-38, intended for US Navy use as ZR-2, crashed near Hull, England. Forty-four of the 49 men aboard died.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Valentine was educated in District of Columbia schools and attended Annapolis High School in Maryland. He graduated from Potomac Academy in 1905.
He had pneumonia at the Naval Academy in January, 1908, and was then granted several weeks’ leave to recuperate.
Valentine married Aileen Barlow in February, 1913. She had brown hair, blue eyes, and was 5’9” tall. She won the tennis doubles championship with Phyllis Walsh at the Merion Cricket Club on June 28, 1917. Their daughter Lovel was only 18 months old when Valentine died. Lovel and her mother had returned to New York City on August 1. They had been with him in England while he worked on getting the dirigible ready for its trip to America.
Aileen and Lovel were active in the amateur ice skating group in Philadelphia. Aileen’s mother had been the amateur women’s golf champion of Philadelphia nine times between 1905 and 1923.
In December 1942 Lovel married Robert William Lees. In January, he went into the Army, and she was inducted into the Waves. In April 1946 she was a stewardess on Pan American Airways from Bermuda to New York City. In May 1947 she married Peter Denniston Kimball. She was an artist who later exhibited her works in Montclair, New Jersey.
Valentine’s father Frederick G. was a Navy captain whose engineering works were used as text books at the Naval Academy. He graduated the academy in 1878 as a Cadet Engineer.

He was survived by his wife; he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Photographs

From the Daily News on August 25, 1921
From the New York Tribune on August 25, 1921
Aileen Bieg's passport, 1920

World War I Service

Valentine was commanding officer of USS Jarvis (Destroyer No. 38) from September 1917 to March 1918 and again from October 1918 to January 1919.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.