After a four-decade plus career, Hillsborough County Clerk of the Court Pat Frank is stepping down from public office next week.

The 91-year-old Ohio native has long been hailed as a feminist hero of sorts. She was the first woman admitted to the Georgetown University School of Law in 1951 and was among the first women admitted to the University of Florida in 1947.

Frank’s first run for public office took place in the 1960s, where her bid to serve on the Hillsborough County School Board came up short. She then won a seat on the board in 1972.

“I was going down to school board meetings because I was very disappointed in the school system,” she told Spectrum Bay News 9 on Tuesday. “I did not like the schools. And so I kept going down to the school board and I got frustrated and said, ‘I can do a better job than they’re doing.’”

She moved on to the Florida House of Representatives in 1976, and two years later advanced to the Florida Senate, where she remained over the next decade. It was there that she became a fierce advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, which was passed in the House several times but always came up short in the Senate.

Frank says she was recently thinking about that time, and specifically about a Tampa Tribunecartoon that sounds shocking to hear about some four decades later.

“It showed the tides of the waters going in and out and said that ‘because women experience something monthly, that they are not emotionally equipped to handle the duties of a presidency,’” she recounted on Tuesday.

“My word,” she says with disgust. “I mean really.”

Frank says that Florida’s history on many progressive issues remains disappointing, referring to the fact that while the 19^thAmendment giving women the right to vote took place in 1920, it wasn’t until 1969 that Florida passed the measure.

“Florida is a very strange state,” she says. “It has roots in the Yellow Dog Democrats and that group, they were not particularly progressive. They were racist. They were misogynist. They enjoyed slavery.”

Pat Frank is seen in this photo with President Bill Clinton.

Despite all her success, there were setbacks, including losing out to Jim Davis in a contested Democratic primary for congress in 1996. But she rebounded, going on to win two terms on the Hillsborough County Commission at the turn of the century before opting to run for the Clerk of the Court seat in 2004, something she says she wishes she had done earlier.

“I liked the idea that the buck stops with you,” she says. “You don’t have to get a consensus. You have to make a decision and you have to take the repercussions for whatever those decisions are.”

Frank has been active in Democratic politics along the way, and a particular career highlight was when President Jimmy Carter named her to serve as the Special Ambassador for the U.S. to the Independence of St. Vincent, an island in the Caribbean. 

Though she calls it a great honor, it was also a little dicey, she admits.

“I went down there with the State Department and we presented our credentials to the ruling person, the Prime Minister,” she recalls. “They were turning over the island to this individual. it was a very touchy area because there was great tension over the whole thing. There was a little worry about whether there could be an outbreak of violence. I noticed that guns were being carried, and it made you very uncomfortable. But it was a wonderful experience, and I really treasured it.”

Reflecting on her dozen years in the Legislature, there are certain elected officials she still regards in high esteem some 40 years after she served with them. People like Harry Johnston from Palm Beach County, Edgar Dunn Jr. from Daytona Beach and Mattox Hair from Jacksonville.

“They were wonderful people. They were principled. They would tell you something, and you could absolutely take their vote to the highest rank, because they would not go back on their word.”

And what does she think of members of the Legislature these days?

“People don’t care,” she says, referring disparagingly to term limits of eight years enacted by the voters in 1992. “They’ll lie to your face, and it’s not the way it was.”

Reflecting on the past 16 years as Clerk of the Court in Hillsborough, Frank recounts what she calls “the nastiest campaign that I ever had in my life.” That would be her 2008 Democratic primary battle against Kevin Beckner, who was just finishing eight years as a member of the county commission. 

It got rough, with Beckner questioning the then 86-year-old Frank’s work ethic, following reports by WTSP Channel 10 that posed similar questions. 

“Kevin came down very heavy,” Frank says. “He tried to make it look like I wasn’t going to work – which I was. (That) I was not attending to things, which I was, and that I was having drinks. Which I wasn’t,” she says, laughing.

Frank defeated Beckner by more than 17 points in that 2016 primary. She went on to endorse former school board member Cindy Stuart over Beckner this summer in the universal primary in August, with Stuart winning and poised to take office next week.

In October, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners presented Frank with a commendation for her service to the county, where the majority of members paid tribute to her distinguished career.

“You’ve never been swayed by special interests,” said Commissioner Mariella Smith. “By moneyed interests. By what would help your next campaign. You have always done the right things for the right reasons. Let the chips fall where they may. And that is integrity. You are a true role model, Pat Frank, for all of us elected representatives.”

“I know that we’re on opposite sides of the aisle so to speak, but you were always one that didn’t let those barriers stand in the way,” said now former GOP county commissioner Sandy Murman. “You always worked hard to try to find the solution.” 

Commissioner Kimberly Overman cited some of her votes in the Legislature, including one opposing the ban on gay adoptions (which stood as the law of the land until 2010 when an appeals court ruled that the prohibition was unconstitutional). 

Frank’s last day on the job is next Tuesday.