Frank Jares Sr.; Retired Professional Wrestler

Frank Jares Sr., a professional wrestler known as “Brother Frank” during early television’s wrestling heyday, has died in Valencia. He was 77.

Jares, who started out as an amateur wrestler and weightlifter, played a villain in the professional wrestling ring from 1945 until his retirement in 1959.

He died Tuesday of complications related to pneumonia, said his son Joe Jares of Los Angeles.

Born Oct. 6, 1912, in Pittsburgh, Pa., Jares came to California as a teen-ager. At 14, his parents were killed in an auto accident, and he dropped out of high school and started driving a truck for a living.

He began wrestling and lifting weights at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. He became the Pacific Coast amateur wrestling champion and, in 1932, was nearly placed on the U. S. Olympic weightlifting team as a lightweight-heavyweight. During the 1930s and ‘40s, he worked out at Santa Monica’s legendary Muscle Beach.

Jares left weightlifting in 1941 and went into professional wrestling, appearing as Brother Frank, the Mormon Mauler from Provo, Utah, and the Thing, a villain with a bright orange beard and hair. (For this character, he toted a black box that emitted a hissing rattlesnake sound when he pushed a button.)

“One woman wrote to me that she got so mad watching me wrestle on TV that she threw a shoe at the set and broke the tube,” Jares once said. “She said that if I was really a decent type, I would help her fix it.”

Jares, who lost the sight in his right eye in an accidental finger-gouging during an amateur match, always said the greatest danger in the sport was not the opponents but the fans. One time, a ring-sider gave him a swipe across the forehead, causing a cut that took 13 stitches to close.

“But it was good publicity. People jammed the place to see me fight with a bandage on my forehead,” he said of the episode.

After he left the professional wrestling circuit, Jares went to work as a butcher for a packinghouse in San Fernando. A knee injury a few years later forced him to quit.

In the mid-1980s, he moved to Valencia and was a regular at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center.

In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife of 53 years, Dorothy Jares of Valencia; son Frank Jares Jr. of Newhall; two sisters, Sophia Diehl of Eugene, Ore., and Helen Vetterly of Pittsburgh; six granddaughters and one great-grandson.

A funeral service is scheduled for 3 p.m. today at Eternal Valley Memorial Park, 23287 N. Sierra Highway, Newhall, which is handling the arrangements. Donations can be made in Jares’ name to the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center, 22900 Market St., Newhall 91321.