Elsie Frank, 92, Activist Mother of Rep. Barney Frank and Ann Lewis
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Elsie Frank, who died Sunday at 92, was the mother of U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and President Clinton’s communications director, Ann Lewis. She was also a formidable activist in her own right, having caught the political bug during her son’s 1982 re-election campaign.
Frank starred in one of her son’s 1982 campaign commercials, in which she sat in an overstuffed chair in her Back Bay apartment and told Boston voters that Mr. Frank would fight cuts to Social Security and Medicare. “How do I know he’ll do the right thing by us older people?” she said. “Because he is my son.”
The commercial led to speaking engagements, and Frank soon became a popular senior citizens advocate. In 1983, a photo still from the commercial was featured on the cover of Harper’s Magazine.
She was co-founder of the Committee to End Elder Homelessness in Boston and, for many years, was president of the Massachusetts Association of Older Americans.
Frank grew up in Bayonne, N.J., the daughter of Russian immigrants. Her parents died when she was 12, and she was raised by an elder sister.
Although she was salutatorian of the Bayonne High School class of 1929, college was not a possibility, and she became a legal secretary. In 1936, she married Samuel Frank, who eventually became co-owner of a truck stop in the shadow of Pulaski Skyway.
After Samuel Frank died of a heart attack, in 1960, she returned to work as a legal secretary at the New York firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In 1973, Frank moved to Boston to be nearer to her children. She continued to work as a legal secretary, but retired a decade later to help in Mr. Frank’s first re-election campaign.
In addition to her work on behalf of seniors, Frank was outspoken in her support of lesbian and gay groups and often marched in gay pride parades.
Until about a month ago, according to her family, she was living on her own, doing her own shopping, and taking walks. She was giving speeches on elderly issues as recently as last year.
Elsie Golush Frank
Born October 20, 1912, in Bayonne, N.J.; died August 7 of cancer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In addition to Mr. Frank and Ms. Lewis, who is now spokeswoman for Senator Clinton’s re-election campaign, she is survived by two other children, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
