Franklin Rae Foster, an advertising executive whose clients ranged from the banking industry to politicians, died of heart failure Friday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Roland Park resident was 75.
A partner in the Foster & Green advertising agency in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, he specialized in national industrial accounts. He also handled advertising for Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co., the Maryland Lottery and several Democratic political campaigns. He retired in 1990.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Glyndon, he was known as Wink. He attended Calvert School and graduated from the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.
In June 1944, he enlisted in the Marines. Because he had trained in celestial navigation, he became a navigator on aircraft. He also took aerial photographs of the destruction caused by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After the war, he earned a degree in psychology from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
"Wink was a consummate gentleman. He had a great heart for people," said Allan J. Mead, a friend. "There were a lot of stories of his mischievous pranks with his friends - he had a fantastic sense of humor, which was a benefit to him in business. He made friends so easily."
One of them was novelist F. Van Wyck Mason, who dedicated a book to Mr. Foster. He had been taken hunting at the Wroten Island Club by Mr. Foster, who was secretary of the group that owns and hunts and fishes on the island of several hundred acres in Dorchester County's Honga River.
Mr. Foster also hunted with the Green Spring Hounds and was its hunt secretary for 15 seasons.
He was a friend of and did advertising work for former U.S. Sen. Daniel B. Brewster and Gov. Harry R. Hughes.
In 1991, he married Virginia Blair, a retired music professor at Catonsville Community College, who survives him. A previous marriage to the former Lucy Sprague ended in divorce.
A memorial gathering will be held at 4 p.m. Nov. 22 at the Maryland Club, Charles and Eager streets, where he was a member and served on its board.
Mr. Foster is also survived by a son, Franklin W. Foster of Glyndon; a daughter, Lucy C.S. Flight of St. Simons Island, Ga.; a brother, John Walter Foster of Saranac Lake, N.Y.; two stepdaughters, Belinda Blair of San Francisco and Georgiann Webster of the Arran Islands, Ireland; and five grandchildren.