Frank Taylor Griggs

If he were writing this, Frank would say that he was a lover of horses, mules, cats, ravens, all things Celtic (runes, oghams, knots, standing stones, music, kilts, Irish Whiskey), Beowulf, Moby Dick, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Greek mythology, Japanese haiku (which he also wrote), Russian fairy tales and supremacist and modern art, mid-century modern architecture, welding and forging yard sculptures for his 1936 Bauhaus-style Wonder House, astronomy and astrology and phases of the moon, ancient pictographs and petroglyphs, and math and COBOL and FORTRAN computer programming. Most of this you could see in the tattoos on his forearms – one of which was the formula he had tortured throughout his PhD dissertation until it contained his initials: FTG.

Born in Orange, TX as a very versatile Gemini, Frank was the youngest of three boys born to Edward and Evelyn Griggs. He grew up in oil company towns in New Mexico and Opal, WY, where he got and cared for his first horse, Buck, and several cats – stray and otherwise – and where he first went out hunting with his dad and brothers. A hard worker, he always held after-school and summer jobs: as a "go-fer" at Opal Mercantile (where he was paid in shiny silver dollars), at a small commuter airport in West Yellowstone, MT (where he learned to fly), with a geological team in Alaska, and as a lumberjack/firespotter in WA.

His "guise" in the world was as a finance professor - first at the University of Wyoming (where he met and married his wife, Linda/Sam, in 1972 and earned his MBA), then at the University of Maryland in Germany (where he served in the Army as a tank platoon leader from 1974 to 1978), then at Arizona State University (where he earned his PhD), and finally at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI from 1990 to 2016.

However, even his university colleagues would tell you he marched to a different drummer – wearing Hawaiian shirts and kilts to class, decorating his commencement "professor" outfit with Volksmarch medals from his time in Germany, and spending summers driving Beater (his 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser) and then Boomer (his 2007 Toyota FJ 40) out to the West/Southwest to climb mountains or to search for 1,000-year-old pictographs/petroglyphs. Worse yet, rather than researching and publishing, he spent sabbaticals in Ireland searching for ancient standing stones and Shelanagigs, and in Moscow introducing Russian students to capitalism during Perestroika.

His nieces and nephews would tell you he's the one that broke the Griggs male mold by actually smiling in photos, always encouraging them to be true to themselves, and competing in insane Scottish games like throwing boulders and "tossing the tabor" (aka a telephone pole). Linda's Nebraska cousins would tell you he spent his whole life working through his "bucket list," and how – in a skit performed for her grandmother's 90th birthday celebration - he had them rolling on the floor as Ed McMahon to another cousin's Johnny Carson.

His best buddy from college would tell you how they watched Conan and Star Trek episodes in their trailer after class/work before they met and married best friends, and how Frank helped him paint the cabin in the Snowies where Frank and Linda rendezvoused with him and his family whenever they came out to Wyoming. Another long-time Wyoming friend would tell you how they biked together over the continental divide on I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne, went skinny dipping in a cold mountain stream to mark a spring equinox/eclipse and did the same thing again in the pre-dawn surf on Nantucket Island.

Several of Linda's friends would tell you how he dressed up for a "Come as You Were" party as the tooth fairy (complete with ballerina tu-tu and wings and magic wand - a shiny ball-peen hammer), and how he sketched the phases of the moon and water colored apples on get well and thank you messages. EGR neighbors would tell you about the many fine meals prepared in his kitchen – which always included plenty of "Zakuskis" (Russian hors d'oeuvres).

Linda's sister would tell you how he showed her how to properly barbecue ribs and make his mother's sourdough pancakes and biscuits. His sister-in-law would tell you how he gave her a banjo out of the blue, and how that inspired her to learn to play it (even though he gave up his own quest to learn to play the ukulele).

His brother and his friends would tell you about the week-long pack trips into Wyoming's wild and remote country (with mules!) that Frank joined them on after he retired. His Dutch-oven-buried-in-the-ground-under-hot-coals-slow-cooked meals are still remembered, as are the choice words he freely used for certain hard-headed mounts.

Those pack trips were what Frank had most missed over the last three years - after a series of falls and other health struggles sidelined him. Hope for returning to the West is what kept him working so hard in PT over that time period – right up until he landed in the hospital for a collapsed lung in early November 2025.

A very special Army vet friend (who shares Frank's birthday 24 years later) would remind you that Frank was an Airborne Ranger before he was anything else, and that their motto, "It shall be done!" is what got him through lung surgery. However, his ailing heart and kidneys never recovered from the surgery, and he entered Hospice care over New Year's 2025. He passed away calmly and peacefully January 16, 2026. Memorial plans are on hold until the spring.

Frank will be greatly missed by all who knew him. As he once wrote to a friend, "It can be an ache that is long in the leaving."

Frank was preceded in death by his mother, Evelyn Haubelt Griggs; his father, Edward Jackson Griggs; and his older brother, Weldon Michael Griggs. He is survived by his wife, Linda Schropfer Griggs, Linda's brother Dave (Jean) Schropfer and their two children, and Linda's sister Beth Wiley and her two children; his brother Kenneth Jackson (Cyndie) Griggs and their children: Rhett Griggs and his two daughters; Lisa (Heath) Robertson and their two sons; Stacey (Mike) Cricchio and their two daughters; Michael's children: Lewis (Angie) Griggs and their three children; Shannon Griggs and Shawn Robarts; and Kristen Griggs and Dave Himes and their two children.