Phil Frank, not just a pedestrian cartoonist

How do I begin? Phil was a kind, generous man who also possessed a genius that everyone came to love. It was my fortune to spend some time with him and my greatest honor as a ranger was to be featured in Farley. All that said, I think Phil would be waiting for something unusual to be said about him, so here goes: Phil had really skinny legs. In shorts he looked like a bird ready to fly away. There, I said it.

During the time that I spent with the Franks, I wasn’t aware that Phil had created the “Winkelman File.” He had a collection of sketches of my gestures and notes about the way I spoke. You see, he was looking for a ranger that worked in the Bay Area to feature in Farley. Since the strip was only in the Chronicle, he wanted to do more than Yosemite rangers. I fit the bill as Phil dryly said one time, “He has a sense of humor.”

Being a part of the inner circle of Phil’s world gave me a unique insight into how and from where the Farley characters evolved. Although the subject was never discussed, I would suddenly see one of his bears standing in front of me as a real live human being. It was a jaw dropping experience.

When I became a Farley character it was a shot at fame that I wasn’t ready for. Or was it? It was a little strange to be famous, at least in the Bay Area, and yet at the same time people thought that I was just someone that Phil’s imagination had created. Phil would chortle about that.

Phil was a very busy person, and I was fortunate that he gave me so much of his time. When the series started about me running for President I was so presumptuous that I would write whole Farley scripts and send them to him. He called me and said, “No, no, I write Farley. I just want to know what you are doing in the campaign.” With that direction we went on a two year rampage of me running for President in this parallel universe called Farley.

You must remember that this was the time of the Lewinsky scandals. Phil had declared Farley a Lewinsky free zone. Leave it to me to open my big mouth in front of Phil and say, “Phil, I’ve been thinking about running for President.” He looked to me and I said, “I heard it’s a good way to meet girls.” So that’s the real truth about how the Win With Winkelman campaign started. He asked what party I was with and it just came out of me, “The Peace and Quiet Party.” . . . and off we went.

The nagging question is, “What are we going to do without Farley?” Phil, you belonged to us, we loved you, and we will muddle through, but it won’t be the same around here without you.

Phil Frank, the creator of “Farley” in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, passed away on September 12, 2007. A brain tumor was the cause. Do you remember, we chose him as our Honorary Ranger in 1990? It feels like we have lost one of our own.

In the Sunday edition a few days before he died, the SF Chronicle had a huge spread about Phil's retiring, where he wrote, “You, the readers of Farley, have been the real heroes - continuing to provide me with some of the strip's best ideas and characters by phone, letters, faxes and e-mails.” This has been my relationship with Phil, occasionally sending him ideas and tidbits for his strip along with other notes for more than 20 years. I recall us briefly talking face-to-face only two or three times.

His original strip, “Travels With Farley,” was syndicated in many papers across the U.S. Here we met part time park ranger Farley working in Asphalt State Park. Of course I was immediately drawn to the strip and seldom missed it. In 1985 Phil chose to have his strip appear solely in the Chronicle and called simply “Farley.” And so it became necessary for me to subscribe to the Chronicle … just because of a cartoon.

Cartoon character Farley, a newspaper reporter and part time park ranger was Frank's alter ego. When he used one of my ideas, I kind of felt, for the moment, like we were a team of sorts. Here I was the real park ranger and Phil allowed my alter ego to become the cartoonist. Great fun!

He was incredibly generous with his artwork. One time he was putting together a series of strips to promote the SS Jeremiah O'Brien for the Normandy Voyage and one of the strips had been my idea. Not only did he ask me for this strip to be included in the series, he also offered to re-draw a copy for me. Can you believe that! Of course I said he may keep it for the series and said no need to re-draw it.

Not only did “Farley” bring joy and laughter to us all; but I'd like to think of his strip as a great supporter of city, state and national parks. Sure, the characters brought us humorous situations, but they also brought, in an oblique way, attention to things that happen in parks, whether it's feral pigs rooting the landscape, saving quail in Golden Gate Park or the outrageous behavior of campers. He donated his cartoons to charitable groups all over the Bay Area and drew cartoons for the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County and the Yosemite Association.
As good park rangers, we know every nook and cranny of our parks. Phil knew San Francisco and southern Marin County. Adept at knowing the local political scene, he was also a very decent historian. Phil was the Chronicle's “Herb Caen” of cartoons.

Humor and joking had to be a significant part of his life. With his family at his side, knowing that he would not make it through the night, his wife said they were joking with him.

Phil - I'm missing you already! Who am I going to share my groaner puns with now?

Phil Frank Obituary
SF Chronicle, September 12, 2007

Phil Frank, whose cartoons graced the pages of The Chronicle and other newspapers for more than 30 years, died Wednesday night only a few days after he announced his retirement because of illness.
Frank, a longtime resident of Sausalito, was 64 and had suffered from a brain tumor for months.
His alter ego was a newspaper reporter and sometime park ranger named Farley, the central character in his Farley comic strip, which he once described as "really a horizontal column, documenting the life and times of the characters in the Bay Area." It was the only local comic strip in the country.
Frank also combined with writer Joe Troise to produce Elderberries, a syndicated daily strip about life in a retirement home.
When Frank announced his retirement Sunday, cards, letters and e-mails poured in, wishing him well, complimenting him on his work and offering prayers for his recovery. A typical comment came from Frances Elliot, an old friend and admirer of his work. "I do want Phil to know I am grateful for bringing joy to all of us. ... We need kind, sensitive people like him in our lives," she wrote in an e-mail.
Frank was gravely ill when his retirement was announced.
The end came about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. "He was surrounded by his family," said his wife, Susan. Though it was clear that he could not last the night, his family kept trying to lift his spirits. "We were joking with him," said his wife.
Though his death was not unexpected, his passing sent a wave of shock and sadness among his friends, colleagues and admirers.
"Phil Frank was one of those rare artists whose work really defined and articulated the spirit of San Francisco," said Phil Bronstein, editor of The Chronicle. "Like his main character, Farley, Phil was a consummate and devoted journalist and proved that great reporting on this unique place can take many forms. We'll sorely miss Phil, the characters he made us feel so connected to and the way in which he saw the world."
"Phil Frank was an amazing cartoonist who managed to endear himself even to the targets of his wit," said Mayor Gavin Newsom. "His humorous and thoughtful insights on San Francisco's civic life will be sorely missed."
Frank developed a total of six comic strips and published several books over his long career, but he is best known for Farley, which appeared daily in The Chronicle for 32 years.
It began as a syndicated cartoon called Travels With Farley - a play on John Steinbeck's best-seller "Travels With Charley"- and introduced a lanky, bushy-haired character with a flowing mustache. Farley closely resembled his creator.
In 1985, Travels With Farley became simply Farley. Frank gave Farley a home in San Francisco, a job as a reporter on a newspaper called The Daily Requirement, a girlfriend named Irene and a cast of characters that included politicians, bears, a raven named Bruce, feral cats and assorted humans like Velma Melmac, a female camper who spent her time trying to make nature just like her suburban home. There were also the animals and visitors to Asphalt State Park, where Stern Grove, a martinet in a Smokey Bear hat, ruled with an iron fist.
His collection of bears ran a restaurant called the Fog City Dumpster in San Francisco and were rabid San Francisco Giant fans.
Frank's favorite subjects, however, were politicians, particularly the mayors of San Francisco, from Dianne Feinstein to Newsom.
Mayors were seen gauging public reaction to current events by consulting talking mirrors, hiring and firing city officials as if they were royal retainers, and otherwise being made to appear foolish.
Frank usually drew former Mayor Willie Brown as a tyrant in regal robes and a crown. Brown liked both Farley's creator and his work. "Farley will be missed," Brown said Thursday, "He will be really missed.
"He was to cartoons what Herb Caen was to words," Brown added. "I consider Phil Frank a great friend - and, believe it or not - a great promoter of Willie Brown."
The nature of Frank's work - tossing off drawings seemingly effortlessly - concealed a fine mind with broad interests. He could have been a political figure himself.
"He had a charismatic personality that made everybody like him," said D.J. Puffert, president of the Sausalito Historical Society. "Most of all, he had an internal honesty. He really cared about people and what they were doing."
Frank dabbled in Sausalito's local politics, led campaigns to preserve the town's colorful past and every year rode in the Fourth of July parade, a low-key event that the touristy town never advertised to anyone but locals.
Puffert thinks Phil Frank was the town's leading citizen. "Mr. Sausalito, definitely."
Frank was the president of the Sausalito Historical Society for many years, and in July a historical research center in the Sausalito City Hall was named for him.
"He viewed history as part of the human experience," said Kenneth Roberts, a businessman who knew Frank for more than 40 years. "
Frank was also interested in the history of western Marin County, particularly Bolinas, where he was history curator for the Bolinas Museum.
Phil Frank was born in Pittsburgh in 1943, an only child in a family of steelworkers and artisans. At one time, he wanted to be a Jesuit priest and even spent some time in a seminary.
He changed his mind and went to Michigan State University, hoping to become a commercial artist. He saw an ad in the Michigan State News, the student paper, offering to pay $5 a drawing to someone who would produce a daily political cartoon.
Frank signed up. It was the early 1960s, a tumultuous time. The war in Vietnam was raging, the civil rights movement was in full swing, and students from colleges were heavily involved.
"Phil hasn't changed," said Roberts. "At Michigan State, he was just a younger version of the man we all knew."
He drew cartoons five days a week for four years, and his cartoons were such a hit they were syndicated to other college papers.
After Michigan State, he got a job as a writer and cartoonist for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. He left the Midwest and came to California in the 1970s.
By 1975 he was producing Travels With Farley, which introduced his Farley persona. Travels With Farley was converted after a 10-year run to the local Farley strip in 1985.
Besides Farley and Elderberries, Frank drew at various times a strip called Miles to Go, about a dog named Bob, another called Fritz Crackers in the Marin Scope newspaper and cartoons in two magazines. He also published four book-size collections of his works.
Frank was generous with his talent. He donated his cartoons to charitable groups all over the Bay Area and drew for organizations as diverse as the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County and the Yosemite Association, where his drawings promoted conservation causes and protection of Yosemite's wildlife.
Underneath it all, he was an old-fashioned romantic. He lived on a houseboat on the Sausalito waterfront for 13 years. When he wanted a suitable place to propose marriage, he picked the San Francisco-Sausalito ferry.
His wife, Susan, remembered it was a rainy day, and Phil got down on bended knee on the wet deck and proposed.
He and Susan raised two children. It was an artistic family: Susan Frank wrote a series of four guidebooks to national parks; their son, Phil, is a designer who lives in Portland, Ore.; and their daughter, Stacy Frank, is a printmaker in Santa Cruz.
In his last months, he was unable to draw, so The Chronicle ran Farley Classics and old Elderberries strips.
Once he was asked about his personal idea of luxury. "Being on the crest of the Bolinas Ridge," he said, "and falling asleep on the hillside."
Frank did not get his wish, but it was close. He died at an old friend's house in Bolinas his family had rented for his final days. It was within the sight of Bolinas Lagoon and his beloved Marin hills and just up the road from the cemetery where the pioneers of the town were buried.
"He is at peace," said Susan Frank.
A public memorial service is pending.