Frances Ross 

Frances Louise Ross was born on 30 September 1908 in Washington Court House, Ohio, the first daughter of Alfred Henderson Wayman Ross and Amma Louise Jones Ross. Her family later made their home in Denver, Colorado, where Frances came of age. By the time the 1930 census taker knocked on the Ross door, twenty-one-year-old Frances was already listed as a teacher. You can almost picture her—young, disciplined, and steady—already carving a place for herself in a profession that would define her life.

She moved through Denver’s public schools and then pressed forward to Colorado State Teachers College in Greeley (now the University of Northern Colorado). There she earned both her A.B. and A.M., and even went on to complete further graduate study at the University of Minnesota. That love of learning would be the through-line of everything she touched.

While she was a student, Frances joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., entering through Alpha Kappa Chapter in Denver on 1 November 1928—the very year the chapter was founded. Sorority records, along with the pages of The Ivy Leaf, confirm her presence among the chapter’s first graduates in 1929. It was not an easy time to be a young Black collegian in Colorado; Frances was on campus during the now-remembered “Silver Cup” controversy, when Alpha Kappa’s women posted the highest academic record yet were denied the traditional award. That little episode tells you so much about the headwinds she and her sisters faced—and how they persisted anyway.

After graduate study, Frances came south, beginning her career at Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, where she taught for three years. She then joined Winston-Salem Teachers College (now Winston-Salem State University), and there she truly planted her roots. From her earliest post as secretary, she worked her way up through the institution, eventually serving as Registrar—a position captured in the 1968 WSSU yearbook, her name printed clearly: Registrar.

Alongside her professional work, Frances poured herself into community and cultural life. In 1952 a Burlington newspaper listed “Mrs. Hoyt L. Coble” among more than two hundred volunteers striving to strengthen the region’s civic music programs. She was also, throughout her life in North Carolina, a devoted member of Phi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, continuing the bonds of sisterhood she had first embraced in Denver.

On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1936, Frances married Hoyt Lorenzo Coble in Guilford County. The two made their home in Winston-Salem, where she would live the rest of her days.

Frances Louise Ross Coble died in Winston-Salem on 16 February 1998, at the age of 89, and she rests at Evergreen Cemetery. Her obituary distilled it well: she was a Denver-trained scholar, a Palmer faculty member, and the registrar who helped guide Winston-Salem State University through decades of growth and change.

Her life was, in truth, a steadying presence in every place she touched—her family’s Denver household, her college sorority in its early years, her classrooms in North Carolina, and finally the registrar’s office that safeguarded the academic journeys of thousands of students. You can see in her record a life of both rigor and grace: the woman who kept the books balanced, the records whole, and the doors open for the generations who followed.