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Life Tale: Hard work served Frank Queen well
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Published: July 20, 2009
Frank Queen has had a life that makes for good stories.
As a young man in the Air Force in the 1950s, he watched 32 atomic bombs turn the night sky into spectacular displays of light. As part owner and manager of Mr. Steak on Stratford Road for 25 years, he gave Sen. Richard Burr his first job -- washing dishes -- and kept customers coming back for his teriyaki dishes.
And, now, at the age of 73, Queen has shot his age in golf.
"He can really tell some stories," golfing buddy Carl Cook said. "He keeps us entertained. He's got a different story every week."
Queen started life on a dairy farm in the mountains near Swannanoa. The family later moved to Burke County, where his grandfather was the village blacksmith.
Deciding that the rural life and working in the saw mill were not for him, he headed to Asheville after high school. There, he enrolled in Blanton's Business College to study traffic engineering. In 1955, a buddy persuaded him to join the Air Force.
After a battery of tests, Air Force officials asked whether he would be interested in aviation physiology. He had no idea what that was but it sounded good so he said yes. He learned about the effects of oxygen deprivation and tested the pressurized suits that pilots flying high-altitude aircraft wore. Armed with a Top Secret clearance, he was assigned to work with the pilots who flew the high-altitude surveillance airplanes called U2s.
As part of that work, he spent seven months on an island in the Pacific that had two trees and no women. Every now and then someone would send a picture of a movie star with a note: "This is what a woman looks like. Don't forget."
The United States was still testing atomic bombs above ground in those days, and U2 planes would chase the debris clouds and gather material to be studied. Queen's job was to see that everything was right with the pilot's suit as he climbed into the plane and to assist the pilot when the plane returned. That meant Queen, too, might end up covered with radioactive debris.
"They would run a Geiger counter through our hair," he said.
If the Geiger counter went off again after one shower, he took another.
How far away he stood from a bomb depended on how big it was.
"We were three or four miles from some of them," he said. "The biggest one was 28 miles away."
When the Russians started testing bombs in Siberia, he became part of a U2 team in Alaska.
"I was the only guy there with a suntan," he said.
After eight years in the Air Force, he enrolled at Wake Forest University. At the time, there were no GI Bill benefits, so he supported himself by working as a nurse's aide at N.C. Baptist Hospital (now Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center), giving massages at the YMCA and loading freight at nights for Hennis Freight Lines.
There, he had to move a minimum of 3,000 pounds an hour, which meant he prayed he didn't get assigned to a relatively lightweight load such as hair dryers.
When he graduated in 1966, he thought about teaching, but he had a wife and daughter by then and didn't think he could make it on a teacher's salary. So he embarked on the route that would lead to opening up a Mr. Steak franchise in 1968.
The first couple of years were rough. To keep labor costs down, he covered a lot of ground. He cooked. He cleaned toilets. He wrote the copy for the tiny ads that were all they could afford: "Lost one husband -- last seen in the vicinity of Mr. Steak wearing a very satisfied smile."
Coming up with his own teriyaki recipe at a time when teriyaki was a novelty in Winston-Salem helped the restaurant catch on, and it eventually became the top-grossing restaurant in the chain. At various times, he also had part ownership in other restaurants, including Susie's Diner. He routinely worked until 2 a.m.
"I basically burned the candle at both ends," he said. "I feared failure more than I feared hard work. That's really the key."
Queen wasn't able to play golf much in those days. When he did, golf buddies coming by to pick him up might find him sitting at the front door sound asleep.
"We would wake him up and get him going," Cook said.
In 1992, Queen sold his interest in Mr. Steak to his partner. The years that followed included working as vice president of operations for Joyce Foods, selling real estate and helping open a restaurant in Mount Airy.
"I put 35,000 miles on my car in one year," he said.
Queen tried retiring a couple of times but, eating his bowl of cereal in the morning, he would think that he ought to be doing more and end up taking on some new project. Retirement seems to be catching on a bit more this round. He's active in the Deacon Club. He spends time with his three daughters and his grandchildren. Twice a week, he plays golf with his buddies.
When he's out and about, it's given that someone will come up to say hello.
"Everybody knows Frank," said Cook.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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