Former Vancouver High, UW star Guisness dies at 87

He scored 22 and 21 points in back-to-back games against UCLA in the PCC playoffs that gave the Huskies the league title. He had a team-high 16 in UW’s NCAA tournament-opening win against Texas A&M before a loss to Oklahoma State.

In 2005, Guisness told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “(Legendary UCLA coach) John Wooden gave me the highest compliment. He said, ‘One guy can’t check Guisness.'”

Guisness, who entered the Husky Hall of Fame in 2000, was drafted in the fourth round by the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets, but did not play in the NBA because of a military commitment. He played in 1956 for the Buchan Bakers, an AAU power that won that year’s national title, before becoming an auto sales manager in Seattle.

At Vancouver High, the 6-foot-2 Guisness was a junior on the 1947 team that lost the state championship game to Pasco.

Guisness was inducted into the Clark County sports Hall of Fame in the 1960s. He recalled that Skeets O’Connell, then a physical education teacher at Lincoln Elementary School and later the basketball coach at Clark College, first got him interested in basketball.

He was a fixture at Husky basketball games. He was still going to games this season, and “running 650 steps a day in January” until he got sick in February, said JoAnne Guisness, who was married to Frank for 58 years.

“He was a star in high school, a star in college and a star in the car business,” JoAnne said.

In addition to his wife, Guisness is survived by children Mary and Greg and eight grandchildren. A memorial service will be held May 5 at Saint Bridget Catholic Church in Seattle.

Information from The Columbian archives was included in this article