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Career by Council. Before reporting for training, Lausche went home to Cleveland. Ma Lausche thereupon called a family council to discuss his future. In the midst of his family, Frank was persuaded to give up professional baseball and study law instead (his brother William, an accomplished pianist and composer, was talked out of a musical career and into dentistry at a similar family meeting). It was an important decision for Frank Lausche and, as it turned out, a wise one. Without any previous college training, he began to study law at night, clerking in a Cleveland law firm during the day, and playing semipro baseball for $15 a game each weekend (years later, in 1951, Governor Lausche was nominated for—and reluctantly refused — the $65,000-a-year job of U.S. baseball commissioner).
After 2½ years Lausche graduated from law school, second in his class. He was also second, in a group of 160 applicants, when he passed his bar examinations with a mark of 91.7. In 1920 he joined Locher, Green & Woods, the law firm where he had clerked. Almost immediately he got into politics, as a leader in Ward 23, Cleveland's strongest Democratic district. He had been widely known in the neighborhood from his lamplighting days, and he had a pleasing platform personality. In 1922 the party put him up for the state assembly. In 1924 he ran for the state senate. He lost both races (only once since, in his first bid for re-election as governor in 1946, has Lausche ever lost at the polls). Discouraged, he drifted out of politics, concentrated on law and the pursuit of the other woman in his life.
Six Dozen Roses. One night, when Frank was a law student, he went on a double date with a lawyer friend, spent the evening making calf's eyes at his friend's date, pretty Jane Sheal. After seven years of courtship and engagement, they were married by an Episcopal minister because Jane, a "stubborn Methodist" by her own description, refused to be married in the rites of the Catholic Church. Although Frank was automatically barred by his marriage from receiving the sacraments of his church, Ma Lausche, a devout Catholic, proudly welcomed her daughter-in-law into the family with a bouquet of six dozen American Beauty roses.
Jane Lausche, a wise and witty woman, has been a sturdy asset to her husband. She is a charming hostess, a good housekeeper, and an ornament to any political gathering. Not long after her marriage, she quit her successful interior designing business. Life with Lausche, she discovered, was career enough: "It's like being married to a mountain. There's no use trying to move him or domesticate him. He works, works, works all the time."
But Jane has ideas of her own: in 1951, despite her husband's horrified objections, she took flying lessons and got a pilot's license because, she explained, with all the flying she and the governor do, somebody should be able to take over in case anything happened to the pilot. In her way Mrs. Lausche has managed to change her husband slightly, often without his knowledge. When he refused to yield his wrinkled, tired suits to her for cleaning and pressing, Jane slyly bought duplicate suits, now manages to keep the governor's wardrobe fresh by wifely sleight of hand. It was years before Frank Lausche discovered that he owned eight suits, not four.