Although Ann L. Frank spent her entire legal career as a criminal prosecutor, both defense attorneys and prosecutors backed her when she ran for Cook County Circuit Court judge in the 1994 Republican primary.
“She was very fair and she could see both sides,” said her brother, John Benedek, a defense attorney who lives in Los Angeles. “An example was when the defense bar encouraged her to run.”
Deborah Mary Dooling, a Circuit Court judge who first met Mrs. Frank when both were young prosecutors, said her friend’s ability, honesty and winning personality made her a favorite not only among their fellow attorneys, but also in social circles.
“It was her integrity and her love of the truth and getting to it,” Dooling said. “Everybody loved Ann. There wasn’t anybody that wasn’t drawn to Ann, even on a professional level.”
Mrs. Frank, 49, of Winnetka died in Evanston Hospital on Thursday, Aug. 5, of complications due to breast cancer, after a three-year battle with the disease.
The second and youngest child of Violet and John Benedek, both of whom were lawyers, she was raised in Park Ridge. Even as a youngster, Mrs. Frank was something of a social magnet.
“She always had friends, and she maintained her friends,” her brother said. “In her last moments, a lot of the people in the room were her friends from grammar school.”
The Benedek family traveled the world over, even going to the Soviet Union in 1970, at a time when such trips were rarely made by everyday Americans.
“Traveling like that makes one confident, being around different people and cultures, and she thrived on that,” her brother said.
Mrs. Frank graduated from Maine South High School before entering Northwestern University, where she received a degree in education in 1976. Three years later, she received her law degree at DePaul University, the same law school her mother graduated from in 1941.
A year before graduating from DePaul, she was at the Berghoff Restaurant in the Loop on her birthday, when she met Buzz Frank through mutual friends. Two years later, the couple were engaged. They were married in 1981.
After their first son was born in 1983, they moved from the Lakeview neighborhood to Northfield, then to Winnetka four years later.
Mrs. Frank landed a job in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office after graduating.
“That’s all she ever wanted to do,” her husband said. “The quicker she could get to a courtroom, the better.”
In 1990, she began working part time at the state’s attorney’s office to better care for her children. Despite all those responsibilities, she kept fit by working out a few times a week.
As a criminal prosecutor, she rose to the highest levels of the office, putting murderers behind bars and handling capital cases. After placing second in a three-person field in the 1994 primary, in which the party-backed candidate won, she continued working in the state’s attorney’s office.
Most recently, she was supervisor of state appeals. She took a leave of absence in March as her illness worsened.
She also found time to help with alumni groups at Northwestern and DePaul. And she often was a model for charity fashion shows at Rush University Medical Center.
“When she walked into a room, she would light it up,” her husband said.
Mrs. Frank also had an appetite for books. “She was a huge reader,” her husband said. “It was not uncommon for her to be reading two or three books at one time.”
Pam McCambridge, who became friends with Mrs. Frank 30 years ago, said her friend liked to tell a story about a Junior Miss contest she entered in high school. Wanting to stress her public speaking skills over her poise and appearance, she decided to perform a skit in which she played a character who was “the antithesis” of a typical beauty queen in that era.
“She did her gum-chewing thing as Rosie the Roller Skater,” her friend said. While performing, Mrs. Frank overheard one judge talking to another. “Well, I don’t think she’s Junior Miss material,” the judge said.
Mrs. Frank put others at ease. “She always made you feel you were a little smarter, a little funnier, a little better looking than you actually were,” her friend said.
Mrs. Frank also had a keen sense of humor. “She loved teasing people,” her brother said. “She was a real teaser, but it left her surrounded by the strongest, most secure people, because if you couldn’t take it, you wouldn’t stay around her.”
But she also was very caring, her brother added. “Despite all her recent personal issues she had going on, she was always thinking about other people, showing concern for them,” he said.
“She was magical,” Dooling said. “Everybody wanted to be with her, and everyone just wanted to be her friend. She was just so interesting and interested in everything in life.”
In addition to her husband and brother, Mrs. Frank is survived by three sons, John, Ned and Matthew; and her daughter, Madeleine.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday in Donnellan Family Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. A funeral mass will be said at 10 a.m. Monday in Sacred Heart Church, 1077 Tower Rd., Winnetka.
