kate frank was born on february 5, 1890, on a farm in missouri. by the age of 18, she was teaching eight grades in a one-room school house for a missouri mining town, but moved to oklahoma around the end of world war i. frank was hired as one of the inaugural teachers for west junior high school, which opened in 1920 in muskogee, and taught there through 1923. she received a bachelor's degree from southwest teachers college in springfield, missouri in 1924, and later earned a master's degree from the university of missouri. after several years at west, frank moved to muskogee's central high school, where she taught business education.