Friends
Frank Kenneth Lorenz
Frank Kenneth Lorenz, longtime archivist and editor known to many on and off the Hill as Hamilton’s unofficial “college historian,” was born on July 26, 1933, in Hammond, Ind., the only child to William, a cement plant foreman, and Linda Lorenz. He was raised in Calumet City, Ill., and attended high school for only a few months before dropping out, largely due to his reluctance to complete a swimming requirement. He took a job as a newspaper delivery boy until he turned 17 and could obtain full-time employment, first as a mail clerk and then as a junior clerk in the office of Standard Oil of Indiana in Chicago. At the same time, he pursued equivalency courses required for his high school diploma.
Drafted into the Army at age 19, Frank Lorenz continued GED tests and, following his honorable discharge in 1955, entered the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he graduated as salutatorian of the Class of 1959 and received a bachelor’s degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors and highest distinction in history. Thereafter, he pursued graduate study at Cornell University and the University of Bonn, having earned a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a German Government Fellowship, and began teaching. Thanks to the encouragement from former Cornell classmate David Millar, by this time a relative newcomer in Hamilton’s History Department, Frank Lorenz took a temporary appointment on the faculty in 1965, filling in as an instructor in European history.
After four years as assistant professor of history at the State University College in Potsdam, N.Y., Frank Lorenz shifted career paths and enrolled at the State University of New York at Albany where he earned an M.L.S. degree in 1972. That same year, he returned to Clinton, N.Y., this time as head of the Reference Department at Hamilton’s new Daniel Burke Library. Always with a chuckle and a subtle sense of pride, he liked to tell the story of how Walter Pilkington, the head librarian, offered him an annual salary of $8,500, but he “held out for $9,000.”
Because he joined the library as the rare book collection was being relocated from the former James Library, Frank Lorenz helped guide the establishment of the Archives and Special Collections, including the alumni collection and all the materials accumulated since the College’s founding.
It wasn’t long before he became the “go-to” person when questions arose from alumni or researchers about the history of the College and its graduates. Throughout the next decade, his interest and expertise in all-things-Hamilton grew and garnered the attention of others on campus. In 1983, Joe Anderson ’44, vice president of communications and development, persuaded him to take on additional duties, and he became editor of college publications, while remaining connected to the library as curator of special collections. In the former role, he penned the words that introduced and welcomed hundreds of new students to the Hill and later reported on their professional achievements and life’s accomplishments as editor of the Hamilton Alumni Review.
Although he retired from full-time employment in 2002, Frank Lorenz continued to meticulously research and craft the memorial biographies of alumni. In all, he wrote more than 3,200 of these tributes. In a letter following the announcement of Frank’s retirement, Bill Ringle ’44 wrote: “Although I can’t pretend to any messages from the Great Beyond, I’m sure departed alumni and alumnae, if they could, would join us in thanking Frank for those superb biographies he has written on their deaths. Given the state of newspaper obituaries today, Frank’s careful summations of their lives must have been the only ones many of them received. Even if we aren’t eager to become the principal beneficiaries, we can be grateful that he’s going to continue that task.”
Frank Lorenz was regarded also for his popular tours of the College Cemetery, where he delighted those gathered with stories of Hamilton’s history told through the faculty and alumni buried in the Hamilton’s “last dormitory.” In 2003, the Alumni Association presented him with its highest honor, the Bell Ringer Award, for serving as “a dear and close friend for many Hamiltonians and a respected colleague among your co-workers, who constantly marvel and rely on the accumulated knowledge you have for your adopted alma mater.”
A generous supporter of Hamilton and many community organizations, he served as president of the Faculty Club (1977-87), vice president and secretary of the Hamilton Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (1979-82) and for decades as secretary-treasurer of the Hamilton chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He also provided guidance to students on the Student Publications Board. Off the Hill, he was a member of the board of the Kirkland Town Library, the Clinton Historical Society and the Kirkland Art Center, and enjoyed travel, attending theatre and opera performances and professional tennis matches, visiting museums and galleries, stamp collecting and reading.
Frank K. Lorenz, who had completed roughly one-third of this issue’s Necrology section before suffering a series of strokes, died on Sept. 10, 2015. The campus community gathered in the Chapel on Sept. 28 to celebrate his life and many accomplishments. He is buried in the College Cemetery.
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