Frank Elmer Lawrence

Frank Elmer Lawrence was born second child, and second son, to Orlando Douglas Lawrence and Anna Birdell Moore in Lyons, Kansas. He attended business college as a youth and played baseball for the Salt City team. He also played in numerous bands. He married Maud Rheiner, a neighbor and school friend also from Lyons. They moved to San Antonio, Texas, after their first son was born and acquired an alligator farm, which they ran without much success. Prior to the birth of their second son, Harold, they moved back to Lyons. They later moved to Fresno, California, about the time Maud's parents, August Rheiner and Dolly Purdy, were also moving there. Frank became a carpenter in California, and built a number of homes there during World War I and through the flu epidemic. When his brother-in-law Cecil Beck died in Salt Lake City, Utah, Frank and Maud moved to Salt Lake City at his sister Ruth's request to help run the shop that had been her husband's. When Ruth married her husband's brother, John Beck, Frank started his own upholstery and auto top business. He continued this until World War II, when, like many other small business owners he was put out of business by the government, and went to work for the City of Salt Lake, taking care of their equipment in the city barn. When he and his wife were first married, they were Presbyterians, but later converted to Christian Science. His wife Maud died in December 1904 from complications of childbirth six months earlier, in which an unnamed child did not survive. It is said she did not seek medical treatment because of her religious beliefs, and as a result, Frank rarely attended Christian Science services after that. In his later years, he joined and was active in the Masons. After the death of his wife, he married Marion Buchanan who helped raise his boys and was his spouse at the time of his death.