Antonia Myrup Frank

1930 - 2019

BORN

1930

DIED

2019

About

University of California Los Angeles

Antonia Frank Obituary

January 27, 1930 - February 22, 2019 Toni, a Santa Monica resident for over five decades, passed away from complications of COPD. Surrounded by the love of her family and friends, she was sharp and playful till the end. Born in Victor, Idaho to Mary Laverne Parry and Orion Fjeldsted Myrup, she was predeceased by her beloved younger brother, Leonard Orion Myrup. Vivacious, naturally curious, a newshound, and avid reader, Toni began her journalism career at age 10 with a column for the Salt Lake City Tribune. She wrote and edited for the Daily Bruin while earning her English degree at UCLA, and was the award-winning editor of Current/Living, Features, Weekend Outlook, and Make-up/Design at the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. In her later career, she was Director of Communications for UCLA's College of Letters and Science and a writer/editor for the Los Angeles Times. After her retirement, she wrote fiction, creative nonfiction and memoir. Toni was a loving single mother to Phyllis Frank and Carol Lisa Frank (Ron Diamond) who survive her as do her cherished grandchildren: Sara Myrup Diamond (Sorrel June), Amy Elizabeth Kassowitz, Anna Myrup Diamond (Chase Carter), and Matthew Thomas Kassowitz; her treasured niece Joanne Myrup and family; and many friends, both old and new. Following her wishes, the family is planning a celebration of her life later this spring.To honor Toni's memory, contributions may be made to the JDRF, NAMI, and AAAAI.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by Los Angeles Times from Mar. 22 to Mar. 24, 2019.

Memories and Condolences
for Antonia Frank

4 Entries

That's how Toni made me smile.

April 27, 2019

Toni has always been a sunshine in my life and an encouragement when I was a fledgeling public relations assistant in my third career. Graduating in my late 30s from journalism school, I first met Toni when I joined the group Women in Communications where she played a vital role furthering women in journalism, public relations and advertising. Then we met often when she was an editor at the Santa Monica Outlook and I an insecure publications editor at Saint John's Hospital. I regularly visited Toni in her office with the hope that she would publish stories from press releases I had written. Not only did she publish my stories but always received me with a great welcoming smile. We had fun and always laughed together. I was so gratified because Toni told me she was always looking forward to my visits because I was so entertaining. Little did I know.
Toni and I maintained a friendship all through life. I often visited her until she passed away. I was always so inspired by her passion for writing and joie the vivre. She told me she had just finished writing her life story and was ready to go for publication. I hope to be able to read it one day.
I'm deeply grateful that Toni was part of my professional and personal life. Her support and kindness was salve for me as I climbed the career ladder, rarely encountering women of her kindness. I feel an angel sent her to me during my most trying times. Now that she is with the angels, I still feel her warmth smiling on me.

With deep gratitude,
Paula Correia

Virginia Brautigan Aste

April 27, 2019

From Virginia Braitigan Aste:

She was a good friend and mentor when we studied at UCLA a million years ago. She introduced me to jazz and New World Writing.

Martha Singer

March 24, 2019

Toni was an important and very helpful person in my life. She enabled my career in Southern California and was a great friend, as well. At the same time, I admired her ability to be a very capable single mother to her two lovely daughters.

March 23, 2019

I am sorry that Toni did not get a chance to read this tribute to her and other women like her which I published in a book just this year:

THERE WAS ONCE an important part of just about all American newspapers called Society, or maybe the Women's Section. For short, it was SOC, pronounced sock. And it was important for a newspaper's profits.

Women did read those sections, and women did most of the shopping at the big, heavy-advertising department stores. ...

SOC was filled with fashions, features, and folderol for the most part, but the best women's editors tried to put the most progressive spin they could on the stuff they had to cover. I have a friend, Toni Frank, who edited a women's section for a beach-city California newspaper in the 1960s and '70s: Since the publisher never read that section, Toni got away for years with presenting women's lib stories that the male bosses ignored, or tolerated.

In those same turbulent years, I was working in the Suburban Sections of the Los Angeles Times. My boss stated forcefully that he would never hire a woman to work on the news side, the word news referring to cops, city councils, car crashes, citizens' committees, and criminal justice. We called that hard news, as opposed to feature stories of human interest, soft news.

This book, then, is dedicated to the thousands of women journalists of years gone by those who spent their time in grubby city rooms, or in the polished salons of wealthy socialites, or in the crowded press section of political conventions, or in a church or auditorium listening to some idiotic lecture and who returned to their office and typed out a story that made chicken salad out of chicken droppings, as the more earthy of them might have muttered to a colleague at the next desk.

From "Marguerite Martyn: America's Forgotten Journalist."

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