The sad news comes today of the passing of Frank Brost. Brost never served in elected office, but he was a major political figure in the 1970s through the 1990s. The news is reported in an outstanding obituary in The Dakota Scout by Jonathan Ellis.
His official obituary, and funeral arrangements, will be posted here.
Brost was a graduate of Murdo High School, where his basketball prowess landed him in the SD Basketball Hall of Fame. He attended the University of South Dakota, earning his law degree and graduating with George S. Mickelson.
Brost practiced law in Presho, during an era when Lyman County produced a remarkable number of prominent South Dakota political figures. He became a close friend and advisor to Jim Abdnor, who progressed from the state legislator to the Lt. Governor, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate.
When Mickelson was elected Governor in 1986, he made Brost his chief of staff. Pat Powers found a quote from Mickelson in the April 8, 1993 Murdo Coyote, praising Brost:
During his tenure, Frank was the driving force behind my agenda, personally seeing to it that the priorities of this administration–economic development, the environment. education, health care and government efficiency–were addressed.
Mickelson had offered those words of tribute due to Brost’s plans to retire as chief of staff in May 1993. That didn’t happen, though. After Governor Mickelson tragically died in the state airplane crash on April 19, 1993, Lt. Governor Walter Dale Miller succeeded to the Governor’s Office and asked Brost to stay on. Brost ultimately served as chief of staff for the entire eight years of the Mickelson and Miller administrations, making him the longest-serving chief of staff and one of only two to hold the role for multiple governors.
Brost’s influence remains to this day. It was Brost who, in 1989, called John Thune, and asked him to be executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. Thune, who like Brost was a Murdo native, was working in Washington DC for Jim Abdnor at the Small Business Administration. The move back to South Dakota put Thune on a path that ultimately led him to run for the U.S. House in 1996.
I didn’t know Brost well, but I had the opportunity to interview him in 2023 for the South Dakota State Historical Society’s oral history project on politics in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Brost was perfectly situated to speak to this era and it was a fascinating conversation. The entire interview, which is an hour and forty minutes long, is available to view on YouTube.
Frank’s son, Kurt, posted this tonight about his father on Facebook:
I don’t know that the term Renaissance man would apply to my dad, but he was definitely a man who was comfortable and knowledgeable in a wide variety of settings. From starting out on a sheep ranch in the middle of nowhere along the White River in Jones County to being a force on the athletic field, courts and tracks across South Dakota to building a successful law practice and ranching operation of his own to advising Governors and Senators to traveling the world in retirement with friends and family, dad took on life with an energy, curiosity, a commitment to service of others and desire to grow that is something that the world today could use more of.
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