(The following story by Chris Hubbuch appeared on the LaCrosse Tribune website on October 2, 2009. Robert B. Franke was a member of BLET Division 13 in LaCrosse, Wisc. He joined the BLET on January 1, 1962.)
LaCROSSE, Wisc. — You might not have known him, but you probably remember him: the elderly man in a overcoat and fedora, walking his beagle.
A retired train engineer, Robert Franke was a private man who lived simply and gave generously. He died last month at age 91.
“This man who hardly anyone knew made such a lasting impact on this community,” said Heather Schmid, director of the Coulee Region Humane Society, one of the organizations to benefit from Franke’s largess. “The wonderful, intelligent, stubborn, kind man that he was.”
Franke was born in 1918 in the same Charles Street house where he lived for 91 years.
He graduated from La Crosse State Teachers College with a degree in education. After a year as a substitute teacher, he hired on as a fireman on the Burlington line. It was hard work and miserable hours, but he loved it.
Franke was promoted to engineer and ran the streamlined Zephyr as well as the steam locomotive now parked in Copeland Park. He reluctantly retired in 1984.
“There’s just something romantic about it,” Franke said in a July interview. “I loved running an engine. I still miss it … I’d do it again, I’m sure, if I was a younger man.”
Franke and his wife, Eleanor, attended Mass six days a week – every day but Sunday – and they always dressed up.
Darvin Klatt met Franke in the late 1980s. A high school math teacher, he started painting Franke’s houses during the summer. Rather than pay a baby sitter to look after his daughter, Klatt brought her along and gave her a couple of dollars an hour to help him paint. Franke always made sure she got a real wage.
After Eleanor died in 2001, Klatt made a point of visiting Franke every Sunday for lunch and became his closest friend.
Though his job was blue collar, Franke invested early and wisely. When he was 9, he collected deposits on pop bottles to buy stock, Klatt said, and he eventually owned more than a dozen houses on his North Side block.
He was as thrifty as he was generous.
“If he didn’t have the money, he wouldn’t buy it,” Klatt said.
Though he could be prickly – as an engineer, he was used to having his way – Franke was a soft touch.
He gave generously to Franciscan Skemp, the Catholic church and schools, and the Coulee Region Humane Society. His money helped build a new animal shelter, but Franke never set foot inside because he couldn’t bear to see animals in cages.
“It just really broke his heart when he thought about animals suffering,” Schmid said.
Franke’s generosity wasn’t limited to local organizations.
Klatt said he helped one woman buy a house. When a neighbor’s husband died, he bought her house and rented it back for less than the taxes.
“If somebody needed something, he’d be right there,” said Bill Schilla, who knew Franke for many years and rents one of his houses.
For as long as anyone can remember, Franke had a series of beagles – each named Rex or Rexanne – that he would walk every day. When the last Rex died two years ago, Klatt worked with Schmid to find another beagle at a Washington County shelter. She quickly became Rexanne and now is adjusting to life with Klatt.
Franke was buried in Catholic Cemetery on Losey Boulevard, his headstone facing the Burlington Northern tracks. As the Rev. Roger Scheckel began the graveside prayer, a train roared by.