Frank Ahlgren

Frank Ahlgren was born in Superior, WI in 1903. He graduated in 1923 from Superior State College, known today as University of Wisconsin-Superior. He began his journalism career as a reporter for The Evening Telegram after graduation. Frank moved to the Duluth Herald in 1924. A year later he went to the Milwaukee Journal. Ahlgren moved around to different papers including the Memphis Evening Appeal, the Texas Newspaper Publishing Association in Houston and the Cleveland Ohio Press, before becoming the editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1937. He passed away in 1995.

One of Frank Ahlgren’s memorable stories came from when he was invited aboard the battleship Missouri, on September 2, 1945, to be an official observer of the signing of the Japanese surrender. He was later asked back to Japan to observe and write about the positive changes in the country. Ahlgren once quoted Anne Morrow Lindberg, “I can only pay in gratitude. I can only pay in kind, somewhere in my life.”

Mr. Ahlgren established the Frank Ahlgren Journalism Scholarship in 1986.