Franklin J. Eppig Jr., ex-Medicare official

Franklin J. Eppig Jr., a retired Medicare official who was an aficionado of puns, died Sept. 10 of a heart attack at University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

The Finksburg resident was 71.

Franklin Joseph Eppig Jr., son of Franklin J. Eppig Sr., an Amoco Oil Co. credit department worker, and his wife, Eleanor Eppig, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville.

He was a 1967 graduate of the former Cardinal Gibbons High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1971 from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Eppig began working for the Social Security Administration in 1971 and six years later joined the Health Care Financial Administration, which is now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he was project manager and technical director of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey since its inception in 1991. He retired in 2009.

He returned to work that year when he took a job with the Actuarial Research Corp., from which he retired in 2014.

Mr. Eppig was a supporter of Jemicy School and the Maryland Food Bank.

He was an avid reader and enjoyed doing puzzles, and was known for his “calm and everpresent smile and his dry, but clever sense of humor,” family members said.

“He loved puns and that was his sense of humor and that’s what he’ll be remembered for,” said Matthew J. Brookman, his son-in-law, of Finksburg, who also is a punster.

“It was Frank’s wishes that he be cremated because he urn-ed it,” his son-inlaw said. Funeral services are private.

In addition to his son-in-law, Mr. Eppig is survived by his wife of 44 years, the former Barbara Bunk, a retired physician assistant; a son, Pete Eppig of Ocean City; two daughters, Katie Brookman of Finksburg and Maria Eppig of Tucson, Arizona; three sisters, Sister Eileen Eppig, SSND, of Baltimore, Margaret Rhodes of Annapolis and Lois Testerman of New Bern, North Carolina; and two grandchildren.