Troutman helped shape Augusta

Nobody who met Frank Troutman Jr. would ever forget him.

Augusta certainly shouldn’t.

By the time Troutman died Aug. 10 at age 84, he had spent more than 30 years in his hometown of Atlanta. But there was a wide span during the 1960s and ‘70s in Augusta when discussions of politics, development, industry or civic involvement couldn’t be conducted without mentioning Frank Troutman’s name.

But Augusta had to wait a while to get him.

Troutman owed his Atlanta roots to his father, Frank Sr., a trademark attorney for Coca-Cola and a vigorous booster of the University of Georgia. That made Frank Jr. a lifelong, dyed-in-red-and-black Bulldog fan. His father was a friend of famed UGA football coach Wally Butts, and Frank Jr. remembered spending a night or two at the coach’s Athens home.

But at age 8, Troutman took the trip of a lifetime for any Bulldog. His family attended the 1943 Rose Bowl, when UGA took down UCLA 9-0. He stayed at the team’s hotel. He ate dinner with the players. He bumped into Hollywood screen siren Veronica Lake in the Huntington Hotel dining room. He came back with enough memories for 1,000 fascinating stories - and for the rest of his long life, Troutman would happily tell every one of those stories to anyone lucky enough to listen.

A family business - one of Augusta’s biggest - brought Troutman to the Garden City.

He graduated - Phi Beta Kappa - from UGA in 1956, and from its law school two years later. Straight from there, he brought his young family to Augusta to become the aide to C.S. Castleberry, president of Castleberry’s Food Co. In 1965, with Mr. Castleberry’s retirement, Troutman replaced him as president, and for the next 15 years he spent introducing more modern techniques into the company’s massive canned food production..

Troutman maintained a high profile in Augusta not only from his civic activity but from his politics - he was a Republican fighting the tide when Georgia was a sea of Democrats. His work in local and state party politics helped Georgia transform into a true two-party state. He was acting chairman of the Georgia Republican Party in 1966 and a state delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1968.

Also in 1968, at age 34, Troutman became the first Republican elected to the Richmond County Commission. Troutman didn’t seek re-election in 1972, but legendary Augusta Chronicle columnist Margaret Twiggs wrote the following year that “since he has left office, he has been consulted more frequently on county affairs than any other commissioner …”

While in Augusta, Troutman also was a director of the Augusta Chamber of Commerce, a co-founding trustee and chairman of Augusta Prep, a founding director of the Pinnacle Club and a leading layman at St. Paul's Episcopal Church.

He returned to Atlanta to pursue careers in manufacturing, private banking and metal coil coating - mainly as a sought-after management consultant.

“What I really wanted to be was an architect,” Troutman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2017. “I haven’t told many people that.”

But in a way, he was an architect. He certainly helped plan and build parts of Augusta that still thrive today. For that and so much more, Frank Troutman Jr. will be missed.