By Amanda Ma -

Beginning at age 17, Frank Wetzel (BA, 1950) knew he was made to be a journalist. A trip to the Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of World War II as an infantryman solidified that interest when his story on what he saw there earned him a byline in the Bremerton Sun. Today, he says, he owes his long history as a journalist for the Associated Press, the Journal-American, and his work as an author, to the GI Bill, which gave him the opportunity to pursue his journalism degree at the University of Washington.

“I went to school thanks to the GI Bill,” Wetzel said, reflecting on his journalism career. After serving in World War II, he was an infantry officer in the Korean War. He remembers coming back from Korea and presenting one of his journalism professors, Vernon McKenzie, a former war correspondent, with propaganda leaflets. “He was just thrilled.”

Once he graduated in 1950, Wetzel worked briefly for The News Tribune in Tacoma before leaving for Salt Lake City to work for the Associated Press. Over the next 23 years, he would cover hundreds of stories in various cities, from Denver to Baltimore, and back to Portland. “The most important story was a continuing one in Maryland where the fierce public accommodations, the civil rights movement, were going full blast,” he said.

He also remembers reporting on the collision of two commercial airliners over the Grand Canyon in 1956, prison riots in Montana and Utah, and four national political conventions. Covering the conventions were some of his favorite times as a journalist. “It was the front line of history,” he said. “I thought that having a role in keeping the populace, the voters, informed was important to the functioning of our democracy.”

At the end of those 23 years at the AP, Wetzel was offered the opportunity of taking on the role of editor at the Journal-American of Bellevue, an up-and-coming newspaper owned by John McClelland Jr., an old friend of his. Not only would the job open him up to new experiences, but it was his ticket back to the Seattle area. “I grew up here and always loved it, so in a way it was a return home.”

Wetzel said working at Journal-American was “great fun” with a staff that made everything interesting. “Everyone from David Horsey to Art Thiel, to a number of people who went on to bigger newspapers.”

He recalls a time when he was sent to Washington, D.C., for a two-week seminar at the American Press Institute. The Journal-American was getting great reviews, and his group was to meet President Carter later that day. They were teasing him saying, “If the president mentions your newspaper too, then you have to buy drinks for everybody.” Lo and behold, when President Carter walked into the Cabinet room, he had a copy of the Journal- American under his arm. He put it down on the table and said, “I’ve just been reading one of my favorite newspapers.”

“I was in heaven,” Wetzel said, “and I bought drinks for everybody.”

Unfortunately, the newspaper had a hard time staying on top in Seattle. Competition for growth against both The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was fierce. “We always had an uphill struggle against the big guys in Seattle,” Wetzel said, “but that’s part of the fun of it.” In 1983, the two big Seattle papers joined an operating agreement together, whereby advertising, production, marketing, and circulation were run for both papers by the Seattle Times Company. Wetzel and the Journal-American strongly opposed the agreement, but it went through nevertheless, making it even more difficult for the paper to gain any ground in growth.

So, in 1987 when he was offered the job of ombudsman with The Seattle Times, it was a great opportunity but also a, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” kind of situation. Wetzel was to represent the public at the Times, handling complaints and comments. “As it turned out, I became more of a general press critic, and that was great fun as you can imagine, than dealing with the reader complaints which often focused on the mundane, the ink rub-offs or poor delivery, which would not be centrally very important,” Wetzel said.

At the end of his three-year nonrenewable contract, Wetzel decided to explore other areas in his field. For a short time he developed and marketed compact discs featuring 75 different codes of ethics from newspapers across America. “I thought they would be useful in journalism schools and to editors.”

Come 1995, Wetzel had published his first book, “Victory Gardens and Barrage Balloons,” “the story of the World War II home front,” a collective memoir with contributions from nearly 150 people. The book focuses on the war through the eyes of people who were teenagers at that time.

In 1999, Wetzel was part of a group of authors who published, “Diamond in the Emerald City: The story of Safeco Field.” In 2010, he published a collection of columns on Puget Sound that he wrote for the Journal-American called “Celebrating Puget Sound.”

Today, Wetzel celebrates the publishing of his fourth book, “Lizzie,” the true story of a woman whose life met a tragic ending during her courtship with Wetzel’s father, Ellsworth Scott Wetzel, in the early 1900s. Wetzel said he learned about the existence of Lizzie recently, when he was cleaning out his family’s home in Bremerton.

In an interview on KUOW’s Weekday, with Steve Scher, Wetzel shared the story of Lizzie and what he learned about the secret his father never told him. Scher said, “A newspaper announcing her death said (Wetzel’s) father and her were to be married on the day she died.”  Wetzel went on, “It was an intimate relationship. She clearly was in love with my father who, I hasten to add, at that time was not married. Her death certificate said the primary cause was septicemia. Secondary cause was induced abortion.”

Wetzel said he’s since talked with his father about the topic, “in the sort of intimate conversations I didn’t realize you could have after death. There’s value in seeing how people lived then, and also the continuing need for the access to safe abortions.” Lizzie can be found on Amazon.com. All proceeds from the book sales go to the Kitsap County Historical Museum.

Today, Wetzel has more time for the simpler things in life. When he’s not busy writing, he can be found playing tennis two to three times a week, “Still at it at age 86!” He also enjoys spending time with his three children and their families at his summer cabin on Dabob Bay near Hood Canal. With four grandchildren, ages 7 through 13, he’s kept busy crabbing and fishing in the area. “When you’re on the shore and the sun is out it’s hard to keep a child out of the water,” he said. “My father got me a sailboat when I was 12. When I was older, in high school, we would sneak out to Hood Canal where the water was warmer.”

• Listen to Wetzel’s KUOW interview here (starting at 28:15) >>