Frank S. Merritt

1943 - 2022

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

Frank S. Merritt, a University of Toledo professor of law emeritus, who gained respect as an educator, a Boy Scout leader, and in the local astronomical community, died Dec. 8 in Kingston of Perrysburg. He was 79.

The cause was complications of leukemia, his daughter, Catherine Merritt, said.

Mr. Merritt retired in 2006 after 29 years on the UT law faculty. He instructed students in the fine points of criminal law and criminal procedures such as investigations and adjudications. He taught torts, white-collar crime, and local government courses.

At the spring, 2006, law graduation ceremony, he told the departing students, "You're going to win some you ought to have lost and lose some you ought to have won.

"I would encourage each of you when the dust is settled not to look back but to look forward and to fight the next war, not the last one," he said, according to the summer, 2006, edition of the Transcript, a law school publication.

He liked to work with up-and-coming lawyers and appreciated the return visits by former students. And those who stayed in touch "appreciated his straightforwardness with things," Ms. Merritt said. "He didn't try to make it fun. He didn't make it easy. He made it the law."

Mr. Merritt lived for years in a neighborhood adjoining the UT campus and as a retiree stopped by to hear guest speakers and visit with former colleagues.

"He had a first-rate intellect," said Benjamin Davis, also a UT law professor emeritus. "As a spirit around the school, he was generally jovial and in a good mood and a gentle positive force."

Mr. Merritt for a time was chairman of the faculty management committee of the Legal Institute of the Great Lakes, a multi-disciplinary research center in the UT law school.

Ken Kilbert, a UT law professor and director of the institute since 2007, said that Mr. Merritt served as a sounding board.

"Frank was very valuable in my work and in the work of the legal institute even after he retired," Mr. Kilbert said. "He was liked and respected by so many people in the environmental community, that he had kind of a halo effect."

When Mr. Kilbert told others he was from the UT law school, he'd hear in reply, "Oh, Frank Merritt…" and learn of Mr. Merritt's encyclopedic knowledge or another attribute.

Mr. Merritt arrived in Toledo not long after his 1968 graduation from Case Western Reserve University to become judicial clerk and court bailiff for U.S. District Court Judge Don J. Young. Two years later, Mr. Merritt joined the staff of Advocates for Basic Legal Equality and served as a plaintiffs' attorney in the case brought against Lucas County over conditions at the county jail. Judge Young presided in the case.

For several years in the early 1970s, he lived in Chicago, where he directed a prisoners' legal assistance program and taught in the criminal justice program of the University of Illinois Chicago.

A sky watcher since boyhood, Mr. Merritt was a former president of the Toledo Astronomical Association. Through another volunteer activity, his duties as a Boy Scout leader, he contacted UT's Ritter Planetarium in the 1980s to schedule a show.

"From that point on, I think we were on each other's speed dials," said Alex Mak, retired associate director of Ritter Planetarium.

He collaborated with Mr. Mak for events to mark Earth Day and Astronomy Day, for eclipses, and other happenings.

"He probably taught more people astronomy than anybody else in the community," Mr. Mak said. "He could get anybody motivated and interested. He also was very good at organizing people and getting people together for a cause."

Though not a Boy Scout in his youth, Mr. Merritt became a volunteer leader in 1987 as his son, Ethan, entered Cub Scouts. Mr. Merritt continued long past his son's involvement in Boy Scouts. Until 2020, he was committee chairman for Troop 14. He served on the Erie Shores Council executive board. And, starting in 1996, he was volunteer ecology director at the Pioneer Scout Reservation's Camp Frontier in Williams County.

For more than two months each summer, he moved out to the 1,100-acre facility to guide Scouts in an appreciation of the outdoors. The Scouts learned about topics such as soil and water conservation, wildlife, geology, and astronomy.

In recognition, he received the Erie Shores Council's John C. Haar Lifetime Volunteer award in 2010 and the Glenda M. Bowman Lifetime Inspirational Award in 2014. The League of Ohio Sportsmen in 2013 named him "Conservation Educator of the Year."

"When you get to the heart and soul of where Frank was, it was expanding the horizons of young people when it came to all aspects of ecology," said Ed Caldwell, scout executive of Erie Shores Council. "He was a calming spirit."

Mr. Merritt was born Oct. 25, 1943 in Cleveland to Helen and Stanley Merritt. He grew up in Burton, Ohio, and was a 1961 graduate of Burton High School. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Hiram College in 1965. He received his law degree in 1968 from Case Western Reserve University.

He was formerly married to Deborah Rable Lucius.

Surviving are his son, Ethan Merritt; daughter, Catherine Merritt, and a grandson.

Memorial services will be held May 13 at the Boy Scouts' Camp Miakonda in Sylvania Township. The time has not yet been set. Arrangements are by the Cremation Society of Toledo.

The family suggests tributes to the Pioneer Scout Reservation ecology operating fund at the Greater Toledo Community Foundation or to the donor's local public library.