Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Deford III (December 16, 1938 – May 28, 2017) was an American sportswriter and novelist. Over the course of four decades, he was a regular sports commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition radio program (from 1980 to 2017). Frank Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated magazine from 1962 until his death in 2017, and was a correspondent for the Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel television program on HBO. He wrote 18 books, nine of them novels. A member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, Deford was six times voted National Sportswriter of the Year by the members of that organization, and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review. In 2012, Frank Deford became the first magazine recipient of the Red Smith Award. In 2013, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal, was presented with the William Allen White Citation for “excellence in journalism” by the University of Kansas, and became the first sports journalist ever to receive the National Press Foundation’s highest honor, the W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. Frank Deford’s archives are held by the University of Texas, where an annual lecture is presented in his name. He was a long-time advocate for research and treatment of cystic fibrosis. Frank Deford died on May 28, 2017, at the age of 78, at his home in Key West, Florida.