News Obituaries |

Frank P.L. Somerville, Baltimore Sun editor and religion reporter, dies

Frank P.L. Somerville, a former Baltimore Sun local news editor and religion reporter, died of heart failure Sunday at the Ambassador Apartments on Canterbury Road. He was 93.

Born in Baltimore, Frank Parr Lewin Somerville was the son of William Joseph deThrom Somerville, a Buick salesman, and Laura Hooper Lewin Somerville, a homemaker. He attended Roland Park Country School as a first grade student and later went to the old Saint Thomas Aquinas School and was a graduate of Loyola High School at Blakefield, today called Loyola Blakefield.

As a boy he published his own newspaper, The Tudor Arms Times, named for the street where he spent his childhood.

Mr. Somerville earned a degree in history and writing at the Johns Hopkins University and was a co-editor of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter and president of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.

He was one of three Hopkins students from the same class who would later join The Baltimore Sun. Evening Sun sports editor Bill Tanton and overseas correspondent Robert Erlandson were the other two.

“He had a wry sense of humor and was quiet. When he was an editor he could be very emphatic. If he felt you were wrong, he would tell you. Frank was a man of honor,” Mr. Erlandson said. “Our in-house nickname for him was ‘Father Frank.’ Frank was a fine newsman, and more importantly, a good man.”

Mr. Somerville served in the Far East in the Army’s Ordnance Corps and joined The Sun as a reporter in 1956. He initially covered the police and labor unions. He then wrote about urban renewal and city planning, including the construction of the Charles Center redevelopment area and the reconstruction of the Inner Harbor. He received an award from the American Institute of Architects for his writing.

“He was an invaluable asset to the paper,” said The Sun’s former city editor, William F. “Billy” Schmick III. “He knew so well the history of the city and each of its neighborhoods, and he was a force in preserving some of the older ones during the era of aggressive urban renewal.

“His knowledge was especially valuable to the newer, younger reporters whom he helped guide,” Mr. Schmick said. “Frank was a fine person — kind, even-tempered and with a ready sense of humor — one of the best on a paper that itself was then also one of the best.”

On a blind date on New Year’s Eve, Mr. Somerville met his future wife, Romaine Stec, at the L’Hirondelle Club of Ruxton. They married in 1962 and later renovated a Bolton Hill home. She became executive director of the city’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation and headed what is now the Maryland Center for History and Culture.

In 1978 he was named religion editor and covered Pope John Paul II’s visits to the U.S. He traveled on the papal plane and also met and wrote about Mother Teresa.

“Frank was a legendary religion reporter,” said John Rivera, a former Sun colleague who covered the same beat. “He was highly respected, sometimes grudgingly, by the city’s religious leaders for his tough but fair coverage of their denominations that may have received deference in an earlier era. He also won the admiration of his fellow religion reporters around the country.

“He did a lot of coverage the first wave of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the early 1990s.”

A Sun colleague, Ann Feild said, “Frank was a great lover of early music and I’d see him at Grace and St. Peter’s or the Church of the Redeemer for their programs.”

“He loved local history because his family was intertwined in it. His family was very much part of who he was,” said his daughter, Julia Somerville Ulstrup. “He once took the summer off to catalog and identify missing historical markers throughout the state of Maryland.”

Former Sun reporter Mark Reutter said: “Frank was soft-spoken and levelheaded on a city desk full of often excitable people.”

Mr. Somerville retired from The Sun in 1996.

He was a past president of Baltimore Heritage and the Society of Sons of the Revolution in Maryland, and was a past governor of the General Society of Colonial Wars. He was a member of the Bachelors Cotillon, the General Society of the War of 1812 and the Saint Andrew’s Society of Baltimore.

“He was known for being a stickler on historic preservation issues,” said Anthony “Tony” Barbieri, a former Sun managing editor. “Frank knew all the history of Baltimore that wasn’t in the books — like who was so-and-so’s ex-wife.”

Mr. Somerville was a parishioner at Grace and Saint Peter’s Church in Mount Vernon. He served on its vestry for a number of years.

Survivors include his daughter, Julia Somerville Ulstrup, of Washington, D.C.; his sister, Laura Somerville Ramsay, of Somerville, Massachusetts; two grandchildren; and two great-grandsons. His wife, Romaine Stec Somerville, died in 2022.

Plans for a funeral for Mr. Somerville are incomplete.