San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Mattress magnate a fixture in USF program
The Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco cycles through a lot of seniors looking to take college classes and pass the time on campus. The more dedicated senior students are known as Frommies, and the most dedicated Frommie of them all was Albert Fraenkel, a retired furniture manufacturer from Baton Rouge, La.
Fraenkel found his way from his Nob Hill apartment to the hilltop campus and arrived for school dressed like a preppie and bursting with the enthusiasm of a freshman away from home for the first time. Over the course of 22 years, he took some 300 eightweek courses. Friendly and outgoing among classmates who could be frail and withdrawn, he was the first to raise his hand during class discussions and became central to a group he formed called the Lunch Bunch, said Derek Leighnor, executive director of Fromm.
It was not an exclusive group. People brought their lunch in bags. If Fraenkel spotted someone eating alone or looking lonely he would introduce himself as “Al-Bear” in a charming drawl that dropped the T at the end of his name. Then he would politely ask if he could join that person for lunch, employing the opening line, “What brought you to San Francisco?”
Fraenkel’s own answer was more interesting than most. His son, Jeffrey Fraenkel, operates Fraenkel Gallery, which is known internationally as a top dealer of photography. This put Albert in high company among artists and collectors, but he never dropped a name. He was the opposite of a snob.
He was a friend to all and a Friend of the Fromm Institute, which he supported as a board member of the nonprofit and a major donor. Fraenkel died Feb. 23 in his apartment on Nob Hill. He was 94.
“Albert was the definition of a gentleman, caring, gracious, and accomplished, with his major concern always being about ‘you,’ the person he was talking to,” said former California state Sen. Mark Leno, who met Fraenkel 40 years ago after being invited by Jeffrey Fraenkel to the annual Fraenkel family reunion.
Leno had never been to Louisiana and was instantly impressed with “Albert’s famous Southern charm overlaid with his Jewish compassion. I never met anyone more sincere than Albert.”
Fraenkel met Meg Murray in his usual fashion. She sat down alone for lunch at Fromm and immediately heard his rich Southern voice inquire, “May I join you?” Every subsequent question in his interrogation began with “May I?” This led to Murray and her husband, national college football writer Ivan Maisel, visiting him at home in the Crest Royal for a deep dissection of Louisiana State University football — which led them to get an apartment at the Crest Royal, with her new friend providing a reference.
In November, Murray and Maisel flew in from their main home in Connecticut to attend a dedication ceremony for the Fraenkel Family Garden at Fromm. Among the 40 guests were Fraenkel’s son Jeffrey and his husband Alan Mark of San Francisco, daughter Marien Grace of Petaluma, and younger brother Shorty, who flew in from New York.
“I really admired Albert’s intellectual inquisitiveness,” Murray said. “He was incredibly sharp up to the end and he taught me that you never stop learning. And he was always open to making a new friend.”
Albert Fraenkel II was born March 12, 1928, in New Orleans to a family that stretched back to the Civil War. He attended Tulane University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1947. His first job was with the local utility company in New Orleans. He also served in the U.S. Navy Reserve and was called to active duty during the Korean War. He rose to the rank of lieutenant.
While serving at a supply depot in Pennsylvania, he met Eleanor Lesser, from Charleston, S.C. Because he was on active duty, Fraenkel later calculated that he had spent 21 days with Lesser before they were married in 1954. Those 21 days turned into 64 years. Ellie Fraenkel died in 2018, at 85.
A few months after they were married, Fraenkel was released from active duty and they lived in New Orleans briefly before Fraenkel took a job with a home furnishings manufacturer in Shreveport, La.
In 1959, they moved to Baton Rouge, La., where he founded Fraenkel Wholesale Furniture Company. As a manufacturer of mattresses, upholstery, bedding and furniture, it grew to 330 employees in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. It eventually became the largest manufacturer of bedding in the mid-South. When Congress passed legislation to establish employee stock ownership plans in 1974, Fraenkel signed on. The Fraenkel Co. is now 100% employee owned.
He retired in 1998 and the Fraenkels moved to San Francisco after making a farewell tour of the South and driving west. But he kept his season football tickets at LSU and he left his name on the Fraenkel Center, home of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.
In San Francisco, the Fraenkels rented a 10th-floor unit with a bay view in the Crest Royal on Nob Hill. Soon after, Fraenkel found his way to Fromm.
Fromm is part of the University of San Francisco, but it raises funds to reimburse the university for the use of its stand-alone building, Fromm Hall. For that, it relies on the kindness of its students, who must be older than 50. They pay $100 per class and 20 courses are offered each session, most taught by retired faculty from USF or other Bay Area universities.
Fraenkel normally took four classes per session. A recent schedule was: “Women of the Silver Screen,” “Death in the Afternoon: The Spanish Civil War,” “American Traitors and Turncoats: Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump,” and “Jews, Blacks and Jazz: The Connection.” No university credit is given and there are no tests or homework. With no grades, anyone could slack off, but Fraenkel set an example.
“He was often sitting in the front row of the lecture hall and he always had his notebook in his lap for taking notes,” Leighnor said.
Like at any other campus, there is socializing in the halls and between classes, especially in the lunchroom where Fraenkel always brought a chicken sandwich in a brown paper bag.
Fromm founder and executive director Hanna Fromm would bring her own lunch, and one day in 2000, student Fraenkel walked into her office to deliver a new lunch bag to replace the worn-out one she was using. Inside the bag was a four-figure donation check.
“She said it was the most delicious lunch she ever had,” said Leighnor, who witnessed the exchange. That was the start of a series of contributions to Fromm from Fraenkel, exceeded only by donations from the Fromm family.
When COVID-19 shut down the USF campus, Fromm moved online and Fraenkel’s face was always on the screen. When live instruction resumed in the spring of 2022, Fraenkel was one of the first students through the door. On Feb. 21, 2023, Fraenkel attended his last class at Fromm. It was “Death in the Afternoon.” Two days later he died.