Our Arklahoma Heritage; David Froman built a sustaining acting career despite a lack of name recognition from fans
You have seen his face time and time again on your television screen. It is one of those faces that you instantly recognize without knowing the name or the story behind the person.
The tall figure with the resonant voice and steady presence turned up for years as Lieutenant Bob Brooks on Matlock, the reliable Atlanta detective who worked alongside Andy Griffith’s Ben Matlock across fifty-six episodes from 1986 to 1994.
Earlier he had played the dual roles of the loyal servant Gunther Wagner and his twin brother Bruno on The Edge of Night, and he appeared as a Klingon commander on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Viewers knew the face and the authority it carried, yet few knew that the man behind it was David Wesley Froman, born December 31, 1938, in Miami, Oklahoma, to Guy Willis Froman and Gertrude Helm Froman.
His father served as chief of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma from 1947 to 1972. Froman himself was a member of the Miami and Peoria tribes, raised in the small northeastern Oklahoma town where those connections ran deep. Guy Froman was also a professional minor-league baseball player (primarily first base) from 1921–1932 with a career batting average around .300.
Census and family records show siblings that included a sister, Elizabeth, and brothers William, Robert, John Edward, Donald, and Ronald. He grew up in that close-knit setting before attending Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami. He graduated in 1961 with a focus on speech and theater and began teaching at the same school that same year, remaining on the full-time faculty until 1969.
In the early 1970s he taught at Haskell Indian Nations University near Lawrence, Kansas, while completing a master’s degree at Pittsburg State University and later a doctorate at the University of Kansas. As a graduate student he directed a production of Arthur Kopit’s Indians that featured a young Mandy Patinkin in three roles.
Students and colleagues later remembered his commanding presence and dry humor, including the story he told about growing a beard to disprove an old myth that Native Americans could not.
In 1969 he left Oklahoma to pursue acting. The move took him to New York, where he landed the Edge of Night roles that ran roughly from 1980 to 1984. The characters involved identity switches, crime, and a dramatic on-screen death before the real Gunther returned for the show’s final seasons.
He also turned up on Family Feud during that period.
After marrying Audrey Stein on December 23, 1978, in Staten Island, the couple lived in New York until 1984, then moved to Los Angeles. There, the television work expanded. Besides the long Matlock run that began with the episode The Stripper and ended with The Dare, he guest-starred on Hill Street Blues, Trapper John, M.D., 21 Jump Street, Cheers (as a stern father in a family-dinner episode), Diagnosis Murder, Hunter, Simon & Simon, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, T. J. Hooker, and Werewolf.
Film and television-movie credits included a brief appearance in Hanky Panky (1982), Kelso in Steele Justice (1987), and a role in Blind Justice (1986). His height of about six feet four inches and authoritative delivery made him a natural for law-enforcement and commanding parts.
In 1994 the family returned to Miam Froman rejoined the Northeastern Oklahoma A&M faculty, directing campus productions and later chairing aspects of the fine-arts program.
He retired from full-time teaching in 2002 but came back as a part-time drama instructor in 2007 and continued until illness intervened. He also served as president of the Miami Little Theatre and performed on the Coleman Theatre stage in shows such as The King and I, Fiddler on the Roof, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Miracle Worker, with appearances as late as November 2009.
Faculty members later said that praise from him made students and colleagues glow, and that his standards pushed everyone to do their best.
Froman died of cancer on February 8, 2010, at the age of 71. Contemporary accounts place the death in Miam, while some records note nearby Joplin, Missouri, consistent with hospital care. He was buried in the Peoria Indian Cemetery in Peoria, Ottawa Count
near his parents.
The memorial inscription reads Beloved Husband, Father, Grandpa. A celebration of his life was held at the college’s Fine Arts Auditorium, where speakers recalled the lasting lessons he left behind.
He is also commemorated with a historical marker on the Coleman Theatre Celebrity Park Wall of Fame in Miami, honoring the dual path of the television actor who returned home to teach and perform.
The face that filled living rooms for years belonged to a man whose full story stretched from tribal roots and college clas
srooms in Oklahoma to soundstages in New York and Los Angeles and back again.
