Froehlke was Nixon’s secretary of Army
Wisconsin native, Laird friend was president of Sentry Insurance
Robert F. Froehlke, a talented Wisconsin business executive who served as secretary of the Army as the country wound down its involvement in the Vietnam War, died Friday in Arizona. He was 93.
Intelligent, sociable and a strong judge of character, Froehlke put together a career studded with achievements:
Class salutatorian at Marshfield High. Starting guard on the runner-up team in the 1940 state high school basketball championship. Army veteran. University of Wisconsin Law School graduate. Insurance company executive in posts of steadily increasing responsibility. Key assistant at the Pentagon to Defense Secretary Melvin Laird.
And, most importantly, said his son Bruce, a decent person.
“He was a good man in all that the word implies,” Bruce Froehlke said Saturday. “Did his best for his family, his friends and his country his whole life.”
Robert Froehlke was born in Neenah, but it was in Marshfield where his life took shape.
That’s where he met Nancy Barnes, his high-school sweetheart and, from 1946 on, his wife. That’s where he and Laird became friends — in kindergarten.
Froehlke would later run Laird’s unfailingly successful campaigns for Congress, and when Laird became secretary of defense under Richard Nixon in January 1969, Laird called Froehlke to Washington.
He served as assistant secretary of defense for administration, overseeing selection of the team that worked under Laird in a department that, with the war raging, was one of the country’s most important.
“He understood people better than anybody I know,” said Laird, who remained lifelong friends with Froehlke. “He was a good judge of people, and that’s very important.”
Froehlke was assigned to review all of the department’s intelligence operations, a task that took him across the world and led to a working relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.
In 1971, Nixon appointed Froehlke secretary of the Army.
During his tenure, the U.S. was withdrawing its combat troops from Vietnam and moving toward eliminating the draft. Laird said that meant significant changes for the Army, which used the draft more than other branches of the military.
“Bob pulled that off in very, very good shape,” Laird said.
Laird left the defense post in early 1973. Froehlke followed a few months later. He returned to Sentry Insurance in Stevens Point.
Froehlke had joined Sentry in the early 1950s, as a lawyer, and had risen through the ranks before going to Washington. Now, he was returning as president.
Once again in private life, Froehlke argued for conditional amnesty for Vietnam War draft evaders, an idea that President Gerald Ford adopted.
Froehlke left Sentry in 1975 to become president of the Health Insurance Association of America and later of the American Council of Life Insurance.
In 1983, he became chairman of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States in New York City. He and Nancy lived in an apartment on Fifth Ave. across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but returned often to Wisconsin and their summer home near Waupaca.
Froehlke left Equitable when he hit the mandatory retirement age of 65 but got recruited to run the rapidly growing IDS Mutual Fund Group in Minneapolis. He spent five years leading the group before retiring in the early
“He was a good man in all that the word implies. Did his best for his family, his friends and his country his whole life.”
Bruce Froehlke, Robert Froehlke’s son
’90s and, with Nancy, moving to Scottsdale, Ariz.
Meanwhile, he served as chairman of a fund drive that raised $470 million for the University of Wisconsin Foundation. Froehlke also was a major fundraiser for the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and for the Laird Center for Medical Research on the campus of the Marshfield Clinic.
“Wherever he went he succeeded,” said another longtime friend, Bill Kraus, a former aide to the late Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus, “and he never let a brass ring go by. He took all the challenges and succeeded in every way.”
Froehlke’s funeral will be at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, and a memorial service will be held in Wisconsin this summer. Neither has been scheduled.
In addition to his wife and son, Froehlke is survived by another son, Scott; two daughters, Ann Walters and Jane; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.