The Brinkerhoff family came to Salem in the 1880s because of a school.

Frank's great-grandfather, J.H. Brinkerhoff, arrived around 1885 as superintendent of schools — one of only two teachers in the building at the time, alongside a woman named Myers. Together they ran a three-year high school. Around 1890, Brinkerhoff convinced five young men to stay an extra year. That's when Salem became a four-year high school. He also wrote the history of Marion County.

His descendants never really left.

When Frank Brinkerhoff graduated from Salem Community High School in 1953, both his parents were Salem graduates. His aunts and uncles — nearly all of them — had graduated from Salem schools. "Cousins by the dozen," as he put it, had walked the same halls. His mother's people were dairy farmers in Salem. His grandfather had become a clerk to the division superintendent when the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad moved its shops from St. Elmo to Salem, drawing that branch of the family into town. Generation by generation, the Brinkerhoffs wove themselves into the fabric of the community.

Frank knew by grade school that he wanted to be a teacher. The educators who shaped him made it easy to want to follow them. His first-grade teacher, Edith Gale, set the tone. Mary Margaret Milliken taught geography, history, and English with a rigor he still recalls clearly. In high school came Mary Peace, Ruby Meredith, and H.B. Davis — the same H.B. Davis his parents had studied under. Later, his own children would be taught by Ms. Stouffer. Three generations under some of the same teachers. That's Salem.

After graduating from SIU Carbondale with a bachelor's degree in education in 1957, Frank was drafted into the United States Army and shipped to Korea. The war had ended in 1951, but nothing about the peninsula felt settled. "It was still very war-torn," he said. "I don't know how most of them survived." He spent thirteen months there, came home, married Donna Richardson — a fellow SIU graduate from Mount Vernon — and began building a life.

They raised four children: Brad, Bruce, Beth, and a daughter they adopted from Korea, now 51. All four graduated from Salem Community High School. Donna taught communications at Salem High School — completing the circle Frank had aimed for himself. "My goal was to come back and teach in Salem High School," he said. "I didn't get that. But my wife did." Donna passed away several years ago. Frank carries that loss quietly.

His own career took a different but equally committed form. After one year in Roxana — where the Shell refinery smell was unmistakable — he returned to Salem and stayed. Salem Junior High School. Principal at Oak Park School. Four years as assistant regional superintendent. Back to the junior high. Then, thirteen years as principal at Hawthorn Elementary, finishing what became a lifetime of service to Marion County students.

After retirement, Frank discovered a different kind of adventure: six bicycle tours through Europe, pedaling through Holland, Germany, Italy, and Austria. He found it the best way to see a country, just ahead of hiking. He came home from each trip with new friends and a new perspective, then turned back to the local history work that had always called to him. He served on the Salem library board and the historical commission. He was one of eight people who helped found the Marion County Genealogical and Historical Society. He cataloged nearly half the cemeteries in the county. People gave him what they no longer wanted — five pickup truckloads of documents, photographs, and artifacts eventually found their way to the museum. Nothing was lost on his watch.

Frank moved to Nebraska in October, following his daughter — herself a retired teacher — and her husband, who had been transferred there by the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The same force that once pulled the family to Salem carried the last of them away. A grandson and his wife are both teaching now, in the same tradition.

He will return to Salem in October for the Academic Hall of Fame induction — his second, having been inducted into the Athletic Hall with the 1952 North Egypt Conference championship football team, winners of the first Shrine Game against Centralia. On that rivalry, Frank is brief and unambiguous: "We hate Centralia."

His tombstone is already placed in East Lawn Cemetery. When the time comes, he will be the seventh generation of his family buried there. He left Salem, he said, with something like melancholy — not sadness exactly, but the weight of being the last of his branch still rooted in that ground.

"My branch of the family is no longer in that community," he said. "I was the last one of the group."

The stone is waiting. The story isn't finished yet.