Frank Summerfield was born June 29, 1948, and died Oct. 9 in St. Paul. Experiencing cold Minnesota winters at the end of his life reminded him of those he had spent in the west Texas Panhandle where he grew up: He didn’t care for either of them!
Frank attended undergraduate school in New Jersey before moving to California where he studied at Cal-Poly. He continued his graduate work in Hawaii.
Frank finished his doctorate at the University of California-Davis, earning a degree in biochemistry and biophysics. His private research focused chiefly on the process of aging, which he had hoped to beat by focusing on telomeres, the DNA containers at the end of our chromosomes.
He was interested in people of every culture, and many of those friends attended his memorial service at St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church on Oct. 20.
