Ships
- USS Lexington (CV-2) Captain from 22 August 1928 · Relieved on 30 June 1930
Frank Dunn Berrien was born on 17 August 1877 in Galesburg, Illinois. He grew up in Iowa and graduated from Clinton High School in 1895. At the Naval Academy he played right end in football and second base in baseball. He served in the cruiser Cincinnati during the Spanish-American War, graduated in June 1900, and then served with the Asiatic Squadron through the Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine-American War. He married Mary Elizabeth Whittelsey in New Haven on 9 November 1907.
From 1908 to 1910 he was Navy's 13th head football coach (21–5–3) and also taught ordnance and gunnery. He became the first commanding officer of the destroyer Trippe (1911–14) and patrolled off Veracruz. In World War I he commanded the destroyers Nicholson and Wilkes. With Nicholson he fought the action of 17 November 1917 and won the Distinguished Service Medal. Just before the Armistice he took the hospital ship Comfort to Brest.
He commanded the submarine base at New London and the Atlantic Fleet's European destroyer squadron, graduated from the Naval and Army War Colleges, and taught naval science at Yale. In 1928, at 50, he earned an aviation observer rating at Pensacola and became the second captain of the giant new carrier Lexington. He then served as captain of the yard at the Washington Navy Yard. He retired on 30 June 1935 and was advanced to rear admiral. In 1942 he was the only member of the Class of 1900 to return to active duty, supervising troop convoys from San Francisco to Australia.
Britain made him a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, and Greece a commander of the Order of the Saviour. In his life he served in six conflicts. He died at home in New Haven on 31 January 1951, at 73.