Frank Wood and his wife, Agnes, purchased The Denmark Press in 1953, becoming half the staff of two full- and two part-time employees. They would go on to purchase or develop more than 30 niche publications, shoppers or newspapers, all located across six counties in northeastern Wisconsin.
Among those publications were six weeklies, a semi-weekly and a six-day daily, The Green Bay News-Chronicle, as well as two commercial printing plants. Over time, competition from several dailies forced Wood to decide whether to grow, get out or fight back.
Each new addition to the family resulted in Agnes losing one of her jobs at the paper or the purchase of a new time-saving appliance. She lost her last job (billing) when their seventh child (out of eight) was born.
Teaching part-time in the 1950s and 1960s, Wood accepted a full-time professorship of humanities at St. Norbert College in 1966, retiring in 1998. He regarded both vocations as stewardship and passionately believed in the need for a community to be well-informed in order to make intelligent choices affecting its future.
