Past NPC president Frank A. Aukofer, age 90

Frank A. Aukofer, who parlayed an apprenticeship in the printing trade into a 40-year career as an award-winning newspaper reporter in Washington and Milwaukee, has died.

He passed away peacefully on the morning of July 14 surrounded by friends and family at his residence at Goodwin House in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 90.

Along the way, he served as president of the National Press Club in 1978, and first president and chairman, as well as a board member, of the National Press Foundation from 1978 to 2004.

Earlier, from 1974 to 1976, he was elected to and served as secretary and board member of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which oversees the daily press galleries of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in the Capitol building. He also served on the board of the Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

While covering news stories for The Milwaukee Journal and its successor, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he nurtured a sideline job as a freelance reviewer of motor vehicles. At its peak, his DriveWays review column, written from 1975 to 2024,  reached hundreds of newspapers and websites around the country.

Aukofer won numerous journalism achievement awards from the National Press Club, the Milwaukee Press Club, SPJ and Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he majored in journalism from 1955 to 1960.

Frank Alexander Aukofer was born on April 6, 1935, in Milwaukee, the oldest of seven children of Herbert A. (Pat) Aukofer and Wanda M. (Kaminski) Aukofer.

A Roman Catholic, he attended St. John de Nepomuc elementary school and graduated from Messmer High School in 1953. That same year, he started as an apprentice compositor at Wisconsin Cuneo Press, a commercial printer, following in the trade of his father, Pat, and grandfather, Frank X. Aukofer, both of whom were printing pressmen.

He originally wanted to also become a pressman but his father talked him out of it, saying that the pressroom environment was unhealthy, with spray in the air to keep printed sheets from sticking together and solvents to clean ink from the presses. So Aukofer opted for typesetting in the composing room. He started at Cuneo Press operating a proof press, which led to the apprenticeship.

While serving his apprenticeship and becoming a journeyman compositor and Linotype operator, Aukofer used the earnings to attend the Marquette University College of Journalism. Because of full-time work at the printing trade and journalism duties, including as co-editor of the semiweekly Marquette Tribune, he spent five years earning his BA degree. He graduated on June 5, 1960.

The next day, June 6, Aukofer started as a general assignment reporter on The Milwaukee Journal, taking a $35 per week pay cut from his $130 a week wages as a compositor, also at The Journal.

In 1964, he was assigned to the civil rights beat, from which he covered historic stories, including the Selma/Montgomery march in 1965, the assassination in Memphis of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the Detroit riots in 1967 and the Milwaukee open housing marches in 1967 and 1968.

In 1966-67, Aukofer obtained a nine-month Ford Foundation fellowship at Northwestern University, where he studied civil rights and civil liberties in the Law and Speech schools. He is the author of a history of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee, “City with a Chance” (1968).

After a brief stint as an assistant city editor, The Journal assigned Aukofer to its Washington bureau in 1970. He spent the next 30 years there until his retirement in 2000. It was a two-person bureau with an office in the National Press Building. His partner was John W. Kole, the bureau chief, a title inherited by Aukofer when Kole retired. Later, Craig Gilbert joined Aukofer in the bureau and eventually succeeded him as bureau chief.

His coverage included Wisconsin stories and elected officials, as well as many historic Washington events, including the impeachment proceedings against presidents Richard M. Nixon and William J. Clinton. From 1972 through 1996, Aukofer also covered the national political conventions.

Aukofer traveled throughout Central America, Panama, Colombia and Cuba for individual stories and series of stories. He was assigned to the U.S. Defense Department National Media Pool and was a member of the first press pool allowed into Saudi Arabia to cover Operation Desert Shield in August 1990. He returned in January 1991 to cover Operation Desert Storm, the Gulf War.

That experience led to a nine-month Freedom Forum fellowship in 1994-95 at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where Aukofer co-authored “America's Team: The Odd Couple,” a study of the relationship between the military and the news media. His co-author was retired Vice Admiral William P. Lawrence, who, as a Navy F-4 Phantom squadron leader, was shot down over Hanoi in the Vietnam War and spent six years as a POW in the infamous Hua Lo (Hanoi Hilton) prison, where he was the senior officer. Fellow prisoners included John McCain, later a senator and presidential candidate, and James Stockdale, a vice presidential running mate of Ross Perot, who ran as an independent candidate for president in 1992 and 1996. Lawrence later served as commander of the Third Fleet and superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.

As a high school student, Aukofer joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1952 and served as an enlisted airman until his honorable discharge as an Airman First Class in 1960. Assigned to public affairs, he founded and edited the “Flying Badger,” an unofficial newspaper for the Reserve 440th Troop Carrier Wing at Gen. Mitchell Field.

After moving to Washington, Aukofer was elected president of the National Press Club for 1978. (Statement of current NPC President Mike Balsamo on the passing of Aukofer.)

At the time of his death, Aukofer was the senior past president and had been a Club member for more than 50 years. He was involved with planning the reconstruction of the National Press Building in the early 1980s, and was one of the founding members of the Silver Owls, the organization of longtime Club members with 25 or more years of membership, serving as its “Head Hoot” for years until 2022. He rarely missed a Club presidential inaugural.

As Club president, Aukofer presided over luncheons with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Jimmy Carter during negotiations that led to the historic Camp David Accords, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel.

Little did Aukofer know what was going on behind the scenes and how important those speeches were to achieving the peace agreement. Sadat had told Carter that he was going to use his speech to break off negotiations because of the lack of progress with Begin. Carter talked him out of it, offering a “secret strategy” to break the deadlock. Sadat used the speech to bash Israel for “failing to grasp how important this moment was,” but said he was “committed to the cause of peace.”

Up next, Carter said he would use his upcoming meeting with Begin to encourage that direct negotiations resume and that he would act as the intermediary — setting the stage for the Camp David meetings. Begin came third, first making the case for why Israel was establishing Jewish settlements on the West Bank, but asserting that he didn’t want “stalemate or procrastination” in the peace talks and insisted “Israel yearns for peace.”

The Camp David Accords were signed that September, changing the relationship between Israel and Egypt and earning Sadat and Begin Nobel Peace Prizes.

Aukofer also served as president and chairman of the National Press Foundation from 1979 through 1984, and served on the foundation's board of directors for a total of 27 years.

In 1987-88, he was president of the Washington Automotive Press Association. In 2015, WAPA awarded Aukofer its Golden Quill Lifetime Achievement Award for his overlapping 40 years as a mainstream news reporter and 40 years as an automotive journalist.

Aukofer also has been a member since 1957 of the Society of Professional Journalists (founded as journalism fraternity Sigma Delta Chi) and served on the board of the SPJ Washington, D.C., professional chapter, which he joined upon his move to Washington in 1970. In recognition of at least 25 years of practicing noteworthy journalism in the nation's capital, he also was inducted into the chapter's Washington Journalism Hall of Fame.

During his remarks at a membership longevity recognition ceremony of the SPJ DC Chapter in January 2019, he recalled that he started out his journalism career writing obits for The Milwaukee Journal, and then wrote the obit for the paper as it merged to become The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

He also served on the board of Haven of Northern Virginia, an all-volunteer organization that provides counseling services and emotional support to the grieving, where his wife served for many years as the deputy director.

In addition to “City with a Chance” and “America’s Team: The Odd Couple,” Aukofer is the author of “Never a Slow Day: Adventures of a 20th Century Newspaper Reporter,” an autobiography/memoir, published by the Marquette University Press in 2009.

Aukofer and his wife, Sharlene, were married on Aug. 6, 1960, at the Church of the Gesu on the Marquette University campus. He is survived by his wife, four children — Juli (Enrique), Matt (Jill), Becky and Joe (Joanne) — 10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

A Catholic funeral mass and reception will be held at Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads, 3440 S. Jefferson St., Falls Church, Virginia, on July 22 at 10:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Frank Aukofer’s name to the Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship through the National Press Foundation.