Los Angeles County
Biographies
R.
WILLIAM FRANKFURT
A
prominent landowner in Rosemead, R. William Frankfurt, better known by his many
friends as Doc Frankfurt, is a retired pharmacist who worked diligently for the
incorporation of Rosemead, which is now known as the City of Rosemead.
Before
taking up his residence in Rosemead forty years ago, Mr. Frankfurt called Los
Angeles home for a number of years. He
was born in Fairmont, Minnesota, on June 4, 1892, and grew up there, attending
Fairmont Elementary School, but did not attend high school. His parents were Herman and Caroline (Holby) Frankfurt.
His father was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1842; his mother was from
San Antonio, Texas. William Frankfurt
first came to California in 1903, at the age of eleven. He later graduated from Mankato Commercial
College, was with the Pacific Steamship Company for a time, and then entered
the University of Southern California where he graduated as a pharmacist in
1916 and where he had the highest grade of his graduating class, a ninety-four
average.
Working
as an apprentice in pharmacy for two years after the completion of his
education, Mr. Frankfurt obtained his California Pharmacist’s license in 1918,
being one of the five, out of sixty-two applicants, who passed the state board
of examination. The year he received his
license Mr. Frankfurt opened his own drugstore at Vernon and South Main streets
in Los Angeles, remaining at that location until 1935; the drugstore known as
Frankfurt Pharmacy operated by Mr. Frankfurt in Rosemead from 1935 to 1947 is
now Bob’s Pharmacy. The builder of many
stores in downtown Rosemead, Mr. Frankfurt also subdivided the four and one
half acre tract on DeAdalena Street west of Muscatel
Avenue in 1951.
He was married on January 16, 1916,
in Los Angeles, to a native of Hollywood, California, the former Ona Lee Hurst,
the daughter of Judge Ezra M. and Lydia (Sickler)
Hurst. Mrs. Frankfurt was born in the
vicinity of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Avenue on her father’s one hundred
sixty acre ranch which extended to Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, which
he had purchased in about 1880. Judge
Hurst opened the first school in Hollywood in a small building on his ranch,
procuring a teacher from Los Angeles, who taught the eight or ten children
attending the school. The Hurst’s later
moved to Missouri, returning to California, to Burbank, when Mrs. Frankfurt was
still a young girl, in the days when Burbank had board sidewalks. Mrs. Frankfurt is a charter member of the
Rosemead Women’s Club. Both of the
Frankfurt’s are members of the Alhambra Unity Church and both are active in
church work; while Mr. Frankfurt was head usher for three years, his wife was
hostess on Tuesday of each week.
William and Mrs. Frankfurt became
the parents of two sons, Norman and Donald.
Dr. Norman W. Frankfurt is a graduate of El Monte High School and the
Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and practices in Oroville, California. He is married and the father of three
children: Henry Elder Frankfurt, who
attends Los Angeles State College; a young adopted son, Laurence Earl; and a
pre-school-age adopted daughter, Lisa Ann.
Donald George Frankfurt, the Frankfurt’s younger son, also attended El
Monte High School. He and his wife,
Jean, are residents of Rosemead. They
are the parents of three children:
Gloria, Roger, and Phyllis, all of whom attend Rosemead High School. Donald graduated from Pasadena Barber College
and operated his own barber shop in Rosemead for a number of years. He became interested in electronics, sold his
shop and went to electronic school, becoming a very capable television and
radio technician. His daughter, Gloria,
works as a page girl in the Rosemead Library; she also has won her gold pin for
services rendered at the City of Hope.
Mr. and Mrs. R. William Frankfurt
like to travel through the United States visiting various places of interest. Doc Frankfurt, having a devoted place in his
heart for the pharmacy profession, reads the pharmaceutical magazines as if
they were his Bible.
Ona Frankfurt has a different
hobby. She is devoted to create, build
and make things that are useful and that make others happy. In 1961 she made two hundred dolls for the
church bazaar and needy children. “Give
me a hammer and a saw and I’ll build a stairway to heaven and as I climb the
stairs, I will have left all negative thoughts behind,” is the reply Mrs.
Frankfurt makes when asked about doing for others. After forty-six years of marriage, Doc and
Ona Frankfurt have become a very close and devoted
couple. A dream come true was Ona’s wish for Christmas lights in the City of Rosemead,
and Doc was on his way raising money to provide them; the lights have been
turned on annually during the Christmas Season ever since.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume & Reference
Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple
City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 445-448,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
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BIOGRAPHIES