A moderate Democrat, though personally more liberal than his constituents, Frank E. "Ted" Moss was a three-term U.S. Senator who served from 1959 to 1977. He was born in Holladay, a suburb of Salt Lake City, on 23 September 1911, the youngest of seven children of James E. Moss, a well-known secondary-school educator, and Maude Nixon Moss. He graduated from Salt Lake City's *Granite High School in 1929, from the University of Utah in 1933, and from George Washington University Law School in 1937. On 20 June 1934 he married Phyllis Hart, and the couple had four children.

After receiving his law degree Moss worked for two years on the legal staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He returned to Utah in 1939 and became a law clerk to Utah Supreme Court Justice James H. Wolfe. In 1940 he was elected a judge in Salt Lake City's Municipal Court. During World War II he was on the Judge Advocate General's staff of the U.S. Army Air Corps in England. Following the war he returned to Salt Lake and was reelected a city judge. He was elected Salt Lake County Attorney in 1950 and was reelected in 1954.