Frank was born at 1039 Dalzell Street in Shreveport to Frank and Amanda Taylor Ford. After his grandfather, W.F. Taylor, a planter and businessman, died, Frank's father took over the Taylor interests, running wholesale grocery stores in Shreveport and Natchitoches, as well as plantations near Shreveport, Chopin and Greenwood, Louisiana. Among boyhood memories, Frank recalls Jimmie Davis holding the premier of his movie, Louisiana, in Shreveport. "They got some of us local swains to escort some of the girls. I remember I escorted Gail Storm," he recalls. Frank graduated from Byrd High School in 1935, spent a year at Centenary College, and then entered LSU, where he heeded his father's advice. "My dad said, `Son, you'd better get as much military training as you can because we're going to be involved in a world war," Frank remembers. With two years of ROTC training, he finished LSU in 1940 and he entered the Louisiana National Guard, receiving a commission as a second lieutenant. Joining the guard's 204^th Coastal Artillery, he reported to Camp Hulen near Palacios, Texas. When America entered the war, the 204^th was sent to Camp Pennington, California. Frank was soon sent "in cadre" to Fort Bliss to form the Thirty-third Coast Artillery Battalion with Colonel Claude Dance of Shreveport as commanding officer. That unit left Fort Dix, New Jersey for Casablanca on the SS Andes. From there he went on to Rabat and then to Algiers. At the staging area for the conflict in Italy, he recalls hearing about the toll among U.S. forces where they were headed. "Everybody was scared to death of going to Italy," he recalls Instead, they were relieved to be sent to Sardinia, where they were stationed for a year at a small village, Agero. With the Thirty-third he entered France at Marseille as part of the advance to the Rhine. "We could look across the river and see the German soldiers hanging up their clothes to dry," he says. Frank was in Munich when the war ended. He sailed home on the SS Argentina in early 1946 and was discharged at Camp Shelby. Frank worked at KTBS Radio, and then in Alexandria for KPDR. Later he obtained a license to open a new radio station, KENT the fourth in Shreveport. He later sold the station, then worked in general insurance "for fifteen years and fifteen days," he says. Frank then spent thirty-four years with American Family Life Accident and Casualty. Frank married Sue Jackson on May 1, 1948. They had three children and one grandchild.