Frank Garofalo was ‘heart of the newsroom’ in Wichita from the 50s to 90s | Commentary

Frank Garofalo was a classic daily and investigative journalist who brought down a corrupt regime at the Sedgwick County Courthouse, while cheerfully mentoring younger employees at the Wichita Eagle and Beacon and raising a family with his firecracker Sicilian wife, Anita.

Francis Stephan Garofalo’s Bronx Italian Catholic youth shaped his character and career. He became a household in name Wichita when hometown journalism flourished in two daily Wichita newspapers.

He was born on Christmas day 1930, and passed on Jan. 4 at age 95. A memorial is established with Harry Hines Hospice and a graveside service will be held at 2 p.m. on Friday at Calvary Cemetery.

When Frank first asked Anita Tripoli to dance, she asked him for his name. “Frank Spaghetti,” he answered. She was in love before the dance was over. There is a photo of Frank dancing while holding his coattails out as if he were flying.

After serving stateside in the Army during the Korean War era, Frank graduated from journalism school at Kansas State University and took a reporting job with the Wichita Eagle in 1956.

He was a master of the daily deadline’s who, what, when, where, why and how until 1992, when he retired.

Frank never just repeated what he was given; he always rooted around and reported independently of press releases and public relations.

He covered City Hall and the county courthouse as a beat reporter, when reporters worked among those they covered.

There, he developed many sources who knew he could be trusted to report with accuracy and integrity. Even some of those he helped indict respected him and his work.

He covered the 1965 Air Force tanker plane crash that killed seven crew and 23 on the ground in the heart of Wichita’s Black community; the 1970 plane crash that killed 31 Wichita State football players, university staff and boosters and flight crew; and the 1976 Holiday Inn sniper attack that killed three, including his friend, photographer Joe Goulart.

The great horror in his life was the public murder of his son, Wichita Police Officer Paul Garofalo, on Nov. 8, 1980. As Paul was parked on the edge of a large crowd, the killer crept up from behind his squad car and killed him with a shotgun blast to the neck.

‘Heart of the newsroom’

The indictment of high-ranking county employees and a commissioner was the result of his investigation into kickbacks and graft at the Sedgwick County Courthouse.

He uncovered massive nepotism hiring at the courthouse by doing basic reporting, looking up the names of employees and those with the same family name and then calling other trusted sources who divulged additional relationships.

His extensive work was the beginning of professional hiring at Sedgwick County.

He loved to mentor and introduce younger reporters to The Old Mill and Angelo’s Italian restaurants, and if they were deemed suitable, to Anita’s home cooking.

“I was such a kid (18) when I started, but he never treated me like one.” said Cathy Henkel, who spent several years in Wichita’s journalism world before becoming the first female sports editor in the country at The Seattle Times. “Frank was one of a kind, the best kind.”

On Facebook page for Eagle alumni, Tom Webb wrote “Frank made working in the newsroom so much fun. He was a real pro, an unforgettable character and a terrific colleague. Covering bank failures with him during the 1980s, I was always stunned and impressed that he seemed to know absolutely everyone at the scene, from the bank officials to the security guards to the worried customers.”

Betty Wells called him the “heart of the newsroom.”

He wrote 386 columns on real estate, his last assigned beat at the Eagle.

He was funny man with a wry sense of humor and a worldly wisdom about human nature and public affairs. He wrote many bits and performed in most of the pop-up skits in Wichita Community Theatre’s annual review, “Commedia.”

To be in his presence was to feel alive, to laugh, to wonder at human weakness and achievement, to eat well, and to know how to have a good life without excess or sanctimony.

— Dan Rouser is a project manager at HFG Architecture in Wichita and former Wichita Eagle employee.