Leonard D. Herman, a mechanical engineer and man of action who served as a Navy frogman in World War II, shot trap with Charlton Heston and once skied the Matterhorn, died Sunday at his home in the Bairdford part of West Deer.

He was 83 and had been suffering from liver cancer.

"He was a man's man with two daughters," said one of them, Tracy Herman, 59, of Beechview. "He was tough on us. We were expected to do all that (activity) -- and we did. He taught us everything. But he was not big on what you would call emotional nurturing. That came from my mom."

Mr. Herman, a taciturn type who stood 6 feet, 5 inches tall, was a doer.

After service against the Japanese in the Pacific in 1944 and 1945, he built a career as an engineer at Mine Safety Appliance in Evans City and raised his two girls, Tracy and Sandy, 54, of Dorseyville, with his wife, Dorothy. In his spare time, he skydived, skied all over the world, enjoyed trap shooting and raced stock cars.

He was the kind of guy who could fix anything that broke at their home, their vacation house in Florida, their lodge at Seven Springs or at any of the old coal miners' homes he bought and refurbished as rental properties in West Deer.

Tracy Herman recalls visiting a friend's house as a teenager and being amazed to see a repairman working there.

"You mean some stranger comes into your house and fixes something?" she remembers wondering. "We never had a repairman."

That self-sufficiency was a by-product of growing up poor as a coal miner's son in Curtisville, a mining town in West Deer.

Born in 1926, he was the second of five boys, all of whom learned to swim in the water-filled strip-mining pits near their home. Mr. Herman and three of his brothers ended up in the Navy, and the other brother served in the Coast Guard.

Mr. Herman was the only one to see combat in World War II, and his name is enshrined on a plaque at the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Fla. As a ninth-grader, his daughter said, he lied about his age and joined the Navy.

He was going to be a welder, but when he got wind of the new frogmen teams, he signed up. He trained in Fort Pierce as part of Underwater Demolition Team 28 and saw action at Guam in 1944 and later at Iwo Jima. Using inflatable boats, it was the job of the demolition teams, forerunners of the SEALs, to sever underwater nets and detonate mines that the Japanese had laid to repel U.S. amphibious assaults.

Mr. Herman never fought the enemy directly, although he was once trapped on the beach at Guam with the Marines for three days. Clad only in his trunks, the leathernecks gave him a uniform.

Like so many veterans, Mr. Herman rarely discussed the war in detail, but in the delirium of his final days, he began repeating a mantra of how the frogmen survived enemy shelling: "Swim to the bottom, stay there, stay alive."

After the war, Mr. Herman returned home and earned his General Education Development certificate, then went to trade school to become an engineer. After working for Edgewater Steel in Oakmont, he joined MSA in the 1950s and spent 35 years there as a designer.

The family remained in West Deer his whole life, but not by his choice.

"He always wanted to move to Florida," said Tracy Herman, "but Mom would have none of it."

She wanted to stay close to family. Still, the Hermans vacationed every year in Florida and eventually bought a vacation home in the town of Hollywood in 1969.

Mr. Herman found adventure everywhere. He took up skydiving in the 1950s and was a member of a skydiving club, but he had to give it up in 1959 when he landed badly and injured his leg. His daughter said the injury didn't stop him from pursuing other activities. She remembers him rigging up a device that he tied around his waist to take the pressure off of his leg so that he could go hunting.

Through the years, he and his family skied at many resorts, from the Laurel Highlands to mountains in New Zealand and Europe. He and Dorothy, a beauty shop owner who died in 1994, also worked together on rebuilding and fixing stock cars in the garage behind their house, and Mr. Herman raced at events across the U.S.

In his later years, he bought a motor home and liked traveling to the Grand National trap-shooting tournament in Dayton, Ohio, where he leased a space in the 1980s and first met Charlton Heston, a shooting enthusiast. Mr. Herman later leased space at the Grand National in St. Louis, where the tournament is currently held.

Throughout his life, Mr. Herman remained active and healthy, but in February he underwent a stress test that revealed a heart condition. After a bypass operation, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He spent the last few weeks in hospice care at his home.

He was the last of the Herman brothers.

"He was the last leaf on the tree," said his daughter.

Visitation will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. today at Siwicki-Yanicko Funeral Home in Russellton.

Memorial contributions in Mr. Herman's name may be made to the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum, 3300 N. A1A, North Hutchinson Island, Fort Pierce, FL 34949.

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