GARLAND FRONABARGER: THANKS FOR MEMORIES

For more than six decades, Garland D. Fronabarger lived for the news. After joining the Southeast Missourian in 1927, he chronicled people and places and events through photographs and articles. Even after his retirement in 1986, he made frequent visits to the newspaper to chat with the staff. It was hard for him not to chase a good lead.

But as he lived for the news, so his death Saturday made the news because of the many lives he had touched. We will miss Frony. He was a friend, and a respected colleague. He helped pioneer news photography in Southeast Missouri. As a reporter, he seemed at home with presidents and common folk alike. He was sometimes cantankerous, always colorful, and forever curious. He had the right stuff for a good newspaperman.

Over the years, he watched both the newspaper and the region grow, and reported on that growth in his weekly business column. A loyal worker, Fronabarger also loved his time off, especially if it could be spent in the great outdoors. But even his spare time came full circle as he wrote a popular column called "Hook, Line and Sinker" for many years, based on his experiences as an avid fisherman and outdoorsman.

His stirring photographs appeared in many national publications as well as the daily pages of the Southeast Missourian. His color shots of the 10-mile rose garden, which once connected Cape Girardeau and Jackson, were the first color photographs to be published in Readers Digest.

Frony always told the best stories, and oftentimes they were colorful tales that he lived. Who could forget his narrations of the great lion hunt, the times he sat on the bench with the St. Louis Browns, or his attempt to photograph a tornado from the roof of the Marquette Hotel? The memories bring smiles. He seemed to get into the darnedest predicaments, and loved to make the most of them. That was just his way.

Fronabarger is gone, but his image remains with us poised with a camera and notebook, with a cigar clenched between his teeth, he was constantly sniffing out the news. What was Frony really like? Perhaps former Southeast Missourian librarian Judith Ann Crow said it best in an article she wrote in 1967. The occasion was his 40th year at the newspaper. She described her long-time colleague in this way: "G.D. Fronabarger is a big, blustery, tender, infuriating, egotistical, witty, deeply kind man. A man fully worthy of all the conflicting emotions he elicits anger, admiration, frustration, love, respect. Above all, respect."

It's that respect we pay today to a man who willingly committed his life to the betterment and growth of the people and the region through his cameras and typewriter. Farewell Frony. Thanks for the memories.