Frank Doggett

Frank Aristides Doggett (May 4, 1906 – September 9, 2002) was an educator in the Duval County Florida school system and an independent scholar who was an early authority on the American Modernist poet, Wallace Stevens. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida, earned a Bachelor’s degree at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and his Master’s degree at Emory University. He received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Florida in 1967 for his contributions toward the understanding of Stevens’ work.

Doggett wrote numerous essays and two books on Stevens, Stevens’ Poetry of Thought (Johns Hopkins University Press 1966) and, Wallace Stevens, The Making of the Poem (Johns Hopkins University Press 1980). He co-edited Wallace Stevens: A Celebration (Princeton University Press 1980) with Robert Buttel of Temple University.

The son of a prominent Jacksonville attorney, Frank Doggett was the youngest of four children. His family residence is still located at 1548 Lancaster Terrace in Jacksonville’s historic Riverside area. Even as an adolescent, he had a very strong passion for literature and became aware of Stevens’ poetry when he was a 21-year-old student. However, Doggett, a self-professed “goof-off” at that point in his life, did not seem likely to become a scholar. An unsuccessful student, first at Yale and then at the University of Florida, he transferred to Rollins College where met and fell in love with poet and fellow student, Dorothy Emerson. A serious-minded person, Emerson initially would have little to do with him and told him he would have to settle down and study to win her attention. He did so and, in 1933, they married and shared a life devoted to literature for almost 60 years until her death in 1993. They had two children.

After graduating from Rollins in 1931, Doggett went to New York with the aim of entering the publishing world. He soon discovered that his chances there were bleak due to the effects of the Great Depression. With the financial support of his father, Doggett attended Emory but then went back to Jacksonville and became an English teacher at Landon High School. He and his wife lived at the Jacksonville Beaches. As the communities there grew, construction of Duncan U. Fletcher High School began and, in 1937, when the school opened, Frank Doggett became its founding principal. With the exception of a brief stint in the Navy during World War II, he was the principal there until 1964 when the school was divided and the original facility became a junior high. He then became the first principal of the new senior high and remained in that position until two years before his retirement in 1971. He has been acknowledged in the community for sustaining a strong academic focus at the school and for providing inspiration to so many students who subsequently continued their education at colleges throughout the country – some gaining admission to schools that far exceeded their initial expectations.

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