Frances Monroe King earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s degree from Boston University. She taught for two years at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then worked in Boston at the Human Engineering Laboratory, which administered aptitude tests with the goal of placing people in suitable jobs. In 1946, she married Drue King Jr., a graduate of Harvard and Tufts University School of Medicine who would become a pioneering internist. The couple moved to Cleveland in 1953. Drue King taught at Western Reserve University’s medical school, helped to found Forest City Hospital and ran clinics at St. Luke and Mt. Sinai medical centers. Fran King—in addition to rearing four children and serving as a board member and president of the Shaker Heights PTA Council, and as a Girl Scout leader—immersed herself in the city’s larger civic life. She was a board member and president of the Friendly Inn Settlement and served as president of the YWCA of Cleveland from 1974 to 1977. In 1984, the YWCA presented her with the Esgar Award, its top award for service to the organization and the community. She is a former trustee of the Shaker Schools Foundation and an emeritus member of the Benjamin Rose Institute’s board of directors.