Rod Gramer was born in Boise in 1953 and graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in history in 1975. He was a journalist with the Idaho Statesman when he began research for a biography of Frank Church in 1978 with fellow journalist Marc Johnson. Johnson later left the project and Gramer continued alone, assisted by his wife Julie. Rod and Julie Gramer were the first researchers to use the Frank Church papers at Boise State University in 1984. Gramer left the Idaho Statesman in 1988 to become news director for television station KTVB-TV in Boise in 1988. In 1998 he moved to Portland, Oregon, to assume a similar position with a television station there. Additional biographical information can be found in Who’s Who in the American West 1992/93 and in Contemporary Authors (volume 147).
LeRoy Ashby (b. 1938) earned a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1966. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Washington State University, where he has taught popular culture and twentieth-century American history. He has won several teaching awards and has written several books, including biographies of Senator William Borah and William Jennings Bryan. Like Rod and Julie Gramer, Ashby and his wife Mary were among the first users of the Church collection at Boise State. Further biographical information can be found in the Directory of American Scholars and Contemporary Authors (volume 33-36, First Revision).
From the guide to the LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Collection on Frank Church, 1850-1993, (Boise State University Library Special Collections and Archives)
