* Frank R. Creed; Former Customs Bureau Official

Frank R. Creed, 83, until his retirement in 1972 one of the top customs officials in the nation. He began with the U.S. Customs Bureau in 1927 as a messenger and worked his way to regional commissioner in Los Angeles. He was in charge of a vast territory from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border and east to all of Arizona and Clark County, Nev. In 1961, when he came to Los Angeles from New York, Los Angeles collections were only one-eighth of those in the nation’s largest city. When he left, about $300 million was collected annually, one-third as much as in New York. In Pasadena on Tuesday.