Early Life
Frank Mentzer was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, the older of two children (his sibling is Susanne Mentzer). While attending Springfield High School, he started to play folk music, and at age sixteen, he played his first paid folk music concert at the opening of the Visitors' Center for the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in downtown Philadelphia. Immediately after Mentzer graduated from high school in 1968, his father, who worked for the National Park Service (NPS), moved the family to Maryland in order to work at Catoctin Mountain Park. Mentzer enrolled at West Virginia Wesleyan College, but he was also interested in furthering his folk music career. With his father's advice on who in the NPS to contact, Mentzer was able to arrange to play concerts in at various NPS sites. In 1972, he was hired by NPS to play a public concert in the White House gardens for inner-city children. At one point in the concert Pat Nixon, followed by national news crews, came to listen, and a clip of Mentzer singing "If I Had a Hammer" subsequently appeared on national newscasts that evening. Following college graduation, Mentzer enrolled at Northeastern University for further studies in mathematics and physics. However, he subsequently moved back to the Philadelphia area, and for a short time during the 1970s, he worked as the manager of a pinball arcade.
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