Great Gifts to El Paso: Judy and Frank Mangan

The story of Judy and Frank Mangan began long before their book was ever published. Having both grown up in El Paso’s Memorial Park neighborhood, Frank recognized the “new girl” when Judy Peterson arrived for work at The White House department store in 1945. Frank had just returned from earning his B.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri and had taken a position there in the advertising department. Judy had just switched careers from a brief stay at Popular Dry Goods, and while working at The White House, she obtained her degree in journalism and radio broadcasting from the Texas College of Mines.

Changes were sure to come for these two, who married in 1949. Frank left The White House to work for White and Shuford, a local advertising agency, before landing a job in 1951 with one of the agency’s clients: El Paso Natural Gas. Judy worked in a supporting role to Frank, raising their family and helping him publish their first written word together: a weekly newspaper called the Ascarate Texan.

Frank immediately proved to be a valuable resource at El Paso Natural Gas, and after moving through several managerial positions, he was called to head The Pipeliner, the company’s internal newsletter. In 1977, El Paso Natural Gas chose to move Frank, then the Assistant Director of Public Relations, along with 26 other employees to Houston. It only took two years before the Mangans realized Houston was not El Paso and in 1979 Frank retired from El Paso Natural Gas and returned home to launch his next career.

Back in El Paso, Frank and Judy launched Mangan Books and gave life to several works that documented El Paso’s historical place along the Rio Grande. They were stories, Frank said, that would otherwise be overlooked by the big publishers. They were tales from the Old West, of gunfighters and history; stories of their home.

Mangan Books’ most successful title, El Paso in Pictures, is still in print today and was written and designed by Frank himself. Another, Fort Bliss: An Illustrated History, was penned by local historian Leon Metz, and Frank’s design won an award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

For Frank, finding his niche in publishing was easy. “We like having the freedom to do pretty books – high quality books – primarily about the Southwest. El Paso is home for Judy and me. Our roots are here, and it is so great living and working in El Paso. There is no place I’d rather be,” he told the UTEP Prospector in 1981.

Before Frank’s death in 2009, he and his wife approached the El Paso Community Foundation with a generous offer that would benefit the foundation’s charitable work in the community. They donated 52 leaflets, signed by the players of the 1966 UTEP Miner basketball team and their legendary coach, Don Haskins, to the Foundation. The proceeds of these historical leaflets go to fund the Judy and Frank Mangan Fund, a lasting chapter that will forever give life to new stories along the border.

Judy and Frank Mangan’s Great Gift to El Paso is what they have given to our community’s history, and its future.

El Paso Community Foundation

P.O. Box 272

El Paso, TX 79943