Frankel, Stanley A.
Biography
Stanley Arthur Frankel was born on December 8, 1918, in Dayton, Ohio to Mandel Frankel of Peoria, Illinois and Olive Margolis of Dayton.
Frankel grew up in Dayton and attended Colonel White Junior High School (diploma, Box 1, Folder 1) and Steele High School, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1936.
He enrolled at Northwestern University in the fall of 1937. During his time at Northwestern, Frankel was class president three times, was president of Phi Eta Sigma and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Phi Epsilon Pi fraternity. Editor of the Daily Northwestern during his senior year, he was also known around campus for his “Frankel-y Speaking” columns (Box 17, Folder 4), in which he spoke out against racial prejudice and for America's neutrality on the global scene, among other things. He also met his future wife, Irene Baskin of Chicago, in Harris Hall during his senior year. Frankel graduated Magna Cum Laude in June 1940 with a B.S. degree in Liberal Arts. He was valedictorian of his class and was nominated as a Rhodes Scholar candidate.
After graduation, Frankel went to work at the Chicago City News Bureau until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in January, 1941, and assigned to the 37th Ohio National Guard Division, later to become the 37th Infantry Division when America entered World War II. He fought in the Pacific theater, rising in rank from a private to a major and receiving a Presidential Unit Citation for the capture of Manila, Philippines. He also wrote a history of the 37th Division that some war historians called “the best division history coming out of World War II” (Box 16, Folder 8).
He and Irene married on February 20, 1946, and had their first son, Stephen Baskin Frankel, on November 5, 1947. Stephen was followed by Thomas Mandel Frankel on July 21, 1950, and their first daughter, Nancy Olivia Frankel, on June 4, 1955. He worked for Esquire and Coronet magazines from 1946 to 1955, where he wrote some of his most notable articles, like “The Real Story of Rodger Young,” about a soldier in his division who posthumously won the Congressional Medal of Honor (Box 17, Folder 2), “Rudolph, That Amazing Reindeer” (Box 17, Folder 3) and Adlai Stevenson's “If I Were 21” piece, which he co-authored (Box 17, Folder 4). Frankel and his family moved from Chicago to Scarsdale, New York, in 1959.
He served as vice president for both the Ogden Corporation and the McCall Corporation. In his free time, Frankel served as a speechwriter for Democratic presidential candidates including Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey. He also wrote speeches for Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow, a fellow Northwestern graduate who was also Frankel's brother-in-law.
This political activity landed him on Richard Nixon's enemies list, a distinction of which Frankel was very proud.
In 1963, Frankel won the Peabody Award for his work on “The Adlai Stevenson Reports,” a series of televised interviews with the United Nations ambassador (Box 5, Folders 5-6). He also received the Northwestern Alumni Merit Award in 1964, the same year he was elected president of the Northwestern University Club of New York.
Frankel was selected to serve on numerous task forces and national organizations, including stints with the Peace Corps, the Joint Economic Committee and positions on task forces on unemployment, youth employment and job training. He was also active in the YMCA of Greater New York and the school board and town club in Scarsdale.
Later in his life, Frankel was an adjunct professor of business and management at Baruch College (City University of New York) and Pace University. In 1980, he was elected president of the Phi Beta Kappa Associates. He also served as a consultant for Dayco Corporation, a company in his native Dayton.
He revived his “Frankel-y Speaking” columns for This Week In Westchester, a local newspaper, in the mid 1980s (Box 16, Folders 4-6). He also authored a book of his memoirs, based on diary entries and short stories written during World War II, called Frankel-y Speaking About World War II In The South Pacific (Box 16, Folder 7). This led to being interviewed for the CBS special, “Victory in The Pacific,” as well as a “Frankel-y Speaking” talk show on local Scarsdale television.
Frankel died from complications from a cerebral aneurysm on November 12, 1999.