Frank Comerford Walker was born in Plymouth, Pa. , the son of David Walker, a miner and merchant, and Ellen Comerford. The eleventh of fourteen children, he grew up in the frontier mining town of Butte, Mont. , where his father had sought his fortune in 1889 and died of silicosis in 1901. With middle-class status acquired, the children were raised and educated in the Catholic faith that meant so much to Ellen Walker.
Frank attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. , from 1903 to 1906 and took the LL. B. at Notre Dame in 1909.
After returning to Butte, he entered practice with his brother Thomas, won election to the state legislature in 1912. After spending only one term in the legislature, Walker returned to his law practice before serving as a first lieutenant in World War I. Although his firm prospered, Walker moved to New York City in 1924 to aid in managing the growing theatrical enterprises of his uncle, Michael E. Comerford, in Pennsylvania and New York. In New York, the citadel of Irish-Catholic political activism, Walker's taste for the game returned. Having amassed a modest personal fortune, he was first attracted to the career of his coreligionist, Alfred E. Smith. After Smith's defeat in 1928, Walker became an enthusiast and financial backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt. By early 1931 he was a key member of the Roosevelt for President Club and launched a successful drive for funds, contributing $20, 000 personally and soliciting large donations from Joseph P. Kennedy and others. After Roosevelt's nomination in 1932, Walker became treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. Roosevelt appreciated Walker's support and called upon him for various services during the next twelve years. In July 1933 Walker became secretary of the president's executive council to coordinate activities of the new emergency agencies with existing government bureaus. When the president established the National Emergency Council in December 1933, Walker assumed the position of executive secretary and served until December 1935, refereeing the struggle between Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins over who would become master of federal relief spending. Even before Hopkins pushed ahead with the Works Progress Administration, Walker happily returned to New York and resumed his financial career. But the respite was temporary. He reappeared to raise funds for the 1936 campaign but again faded from the Washington scene until 1940. At that time he became an early and vigorous proponent of a third term for Roosevelt. Faced with the defection of James Farley as postmaster general, Roosevelt turned to Walker as a replacement. On August 31, 1940, he became postmaster general and served until June 30, 1945. During the 1940 campaign he solicited support from leading Catholic prelates. In July 1944, he was involved in the decision to promote the vice-presidential candidacy of Harry Truman. Walker also served from January 1943 until January 1944 as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. During World War II Walker originated V-mail: streamlined mail delivery through the use of microfilm and helicopter service to the troops. He became a major news item in December 1943, when the Post Office revoked the second-class mailing privileges of Esquire on the grounds of obscenity. The magazine finally obtained reinstatement in June 1945, when the United States Appeals Court overturned Walker's order. With Roosevelt's death in April 1945, Walker's political career came to an end. After resigning from the Cabinet, he served as an alternate delegate to the first United Nations General Assembly meeting in December 1945. The appointment was criticized by Senator William Fulbright, who considered Walker poorly qualified and publicly questioned his knowledge of foreign affairs. Even without such criticism Walker had every reason to return to private life. He had always considered politics a hobby, and his commitment was more to Roosevelt than to government. His business and social responsibilities had grown enormously over the years. He ran the Comerford Corporation, was director of several banks in the East, and worked extensively in Catholic education and charities. At the time of his death, in New York City, he had made important contributions as a fund raiser for and lay trustee of Notre Dame. Walker has not been given much credit by historians for his New Deal work, although his outstanding personal qualities, and especially his loyalty and honesty, have been acknowledged. Even such chronic faultfinders as Ickes and Hopkins admired his fairness. But his shyness and dilettantish approach presented problems in a cast of political activists. Walker's significance must be sought not in New Deal legislation, although he did contribute to both the Banking Act of 1933 and the National Housing Act of June 1934, but in the added political dimension that he brought to the president. Roosevelt needed a man such as Walker as an honest broker and frequently used him to perform distasteful chores involving Ickes, Farley, and James Byrnes. A progressive in politics, Walker believed in the system of middle-class democracy. Despite his misgivings about the class bias of some New Dealers, Walker kept open the lines of communication between the president and his moderate business supporters. He played the same role with Catholics through his influence with the hierarchy. He promoted an honorary degree for Roosevelt from Notre Dame, thereby undermining the criticism of Father Charles Coughlin, and played amateur diplomat with Maryknoll missionaries seeking to promote a reconciliation with Japan in early 1941. He died in New York City, New York on September 13, 1959, at the age of 73.
He married Hallie Victoria Boucher on November 11, 1914. They had two children.
