Frank Robert Grote, 90, died June 28, 2008 at Harbor Hospice. Funeral services will be held at First Methodist Church in Silsbee at 2:00 pm, Tuesday July 1, 2008, followed by burial in Resthaven Cemetery in Silsbee.
Frank was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 23, 1918, worked in 14 different states and seven foreign countries but has lived in Silsbee since 1951. He is best known as Judge for the 21 years he served as Municipal Judge of the City of Silsbee. During these years from 1977 to 1998, there were over 80,000 misdemeanor cases filed in his court. He spent time with those who had a sour attitude about their citation and was proud of being able to change their demeanor, knowing that they were treated fairly and got a good lesson in not only their driving or behavior but for future years.
While serving as Judge, Grote also taught Defensive Driving for Lamar University at night for eleven years. These 9,500 students still refer to him as Judge Grote.
Franks mother died when he was three years of age and he and his father moved into his grandparents home in Chicago. His father was a railroad clerk and later a railroad travelling auditor who seldom saw his only son. Young Frank lived there under four different family arrangements of relatives. At the age on nine he began earning money in many ways to supplement his upkeep. This led to his ability to work his way through five years of college. By 1940, he earned a degree in Forestry plus a year of graduate study in Forest Engineering from the University of Michigan.
As a teenager during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Frank was fortunate to have summer jobs every year on three dairy and poultry farms in Wisconsin, as a freight handler for Milwaukee Railroad in Illinois, as a road construction foreman for the C.C.C. in Michigan and twice as assistant to the forest manager on the University of Michigan school forest. Upon graduation, he was one of three graduates put to work by Caterpillar Tractor to introduce a new diesel D-@ crawler tractor to some 30 loggers in Michigan and Wisconsin to replace their horses, mules and oxen.
After this, Frank and a classmate who had a Model A Ford car decided to take the first vacation of their lives. With nearly $400 apiece and gasoline at 10 cents per gallon, two sleeping bags and a pup tent, they toured all over the Rockies, down into Mexico, up the California desert, went broke in Oregon and had to go to work in the two largest sawmills in the world at Longview, Washington.
With World War II already started in Europe, Franks friend went to Alaska with a defense contractor and Frank got a job with the U. S. Corps of Engineers to build new airbases in Trinidad and St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Less than a year later after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese cut off rubber supplies from Southeast Asia and Frank went to work for two new U. S. agencies, Defense Supplies Corporation and Rubber Development Corporation to increase supplies from the huge undeveloped areas of the Amazon basin in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. After ten months in the jungle, he contracted amoebic dysentery, went into a coma and was given up as dead by his single American partner. However, an unscheduled supply PBY plane landed in the Acre River two weeks ahead of schedule and flew him 1,500 miles to the nearest doctor in Manaus, Brazil. After recovering, 60 pounds lighter, he was flown to Belem at the mouth of the Amazon where he went to work for PanAm Airways, enlarging the airbase there.
Franks next job was in eastern Venezuela as a surveyor with a seismographic oil exploration crew. It was there that he met his first wife who was teaching in a Gulf Oil camp. They were married in Texas by her father, a German Lutheran pastor. After short jobs in Mississippi and Alabama, Frank was offered a job at the University of Arkansas, Monticello, teaching forestry to returning war veterans. Within two years he helped establish a full four year Bachelors degree curriculum under which he taught 17 different courses over a five year period. It was here in Monticello where his only son Robert was born.
Establishing the curriculum and teaching was very rewarding except financially since Arkansas was second lowest in teacher and professor pay of all the states. So when Frank was offered a job as Forest Engineer with Kirby Lumber Company in 1951 to plan and carry out a perpetual sustained yield of timber from their 650,000 acres of forest land, he was happy to accept. He divided the lands into 12 management districts with 30 ten year cutting cycle areas based upon productivity and logability and built 850 miles of woods roads where needed. On the strength of this plan, Kirby had designed a huge sawmill complex in Silsbee to replace its five old locations. It opened in 1955 but the company had already advanced Frank to Harvesting manager to systematically make the transition
After 25 years with Kirby, Frank retired and went into the consulting business as Consultant-Forest Harvest & Realtor. He had already taken all the real estate and appraisal courses at Lamar University whereupon he worked in six states and two foreign countries before accepting the appointment as Silsbee city judge.
During his more than a half century in Silsbee, Frank was involved in many public and civic activities. Among these activities were a dozen years on the Tax Equalization Board for the city, and he was elected four times to the Silsbee City Council. While on the private Library Board, he drew up the plans, arranged financing for, and built the first Silsbee Public Library, which was later taken over by the city.
For over ten years he served as President of the Silsbee Community Center, donated by M/M Harrison Bomer, which houses both the MHMR Sheltered Workshop and the Silsbee Chamber of Commerce. He was elected to the Chamber Board and later served as its President.
In 1981, Frank served as President of the Silsbee Kiwanis Club and the next year became Lt. Governor of Region 10 of Kiwanis International. In 1983, he was honored by being selected as Man of the Year by the Silsbee Chamber of Commerce.
He served on the board of the Silsbee Country Club and several committees, especially the Building Committee which modified and enlarged the buildings and pool area to the present size.
Upon joining the First Methodist Church in Silsbee in 1951, he served on its Building Committee and was a teacher on rotation for the Mens Sunday School Class.
In the early 1960s along with Dr. Wade Parker, Frank organized the first Republican Party in Hardin County and was first appointed and later elected to be its first Hardin County chairman.
In 1977, he helped organize the Hardin County Board of Realtors and was its first County Chairman. In 1983 he was also Hardin County Chairman of the American Heart Association.
Survivors include wife Lois O. Grote of Silsbee; son Robert O. Grote of Houston; sisters-in-law Dorothy Oates of Woodville, Evelyn Trull of Beaumont and Gertrude Blackmon of Brenham; cousin Jack Hannon of Chicago, IL.; eight nieces and three nephews.
Pallbearers will be Steve Evans, David Davis, Larry Wright, Clarence Dominy, David Trull and Doug Eberling. Honorary pallbearers will be Roger Ratliff, Russ Wilson, Buddy Colton, Sam Ashworth, Tommy Bartosh, Dennis Allen, John Derkits and members of Kiwanis Club.
A gathering of family and friends will be from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm on Monday, June 30, 2008 at Farmer Funeral Home in Silsbee.
