Celebrating Frankie’s Fair Haven Legacy of Luck and Smiles

I could still see him. I believe everyone could. He was standing right up front in the far corner of the packed room. He could see it all from there. And, boy, was he smiling. Head tilted back a bit, to take it all in as best he could, his iconic smile spoke a thousand “How lucky we were” words. The rapturous sigh that emanated from his grin filled the room with his legacy of home-grown love.

I could see him add a wink this time as he read the room. The room, in a still-the-same Columbus Club corner nook on the street where we kids biked down the hill to school, was packed with those kids from his Fair Haven childhood.

As if time never passed for them, they were now unbeknownst ageless seniors — still cracking the same jokes, telling the same stories about adventures from the creek to the schoolyard and back, snickering over mean old Father Hickey’s bluster and Cadillac drives through town, Acme shoplifting caper confessions, hugging, shaking heads over prank survival, retelling tales of hunting cabin adventures, admitting to secret kid crushes and parental complicity revealed in a 5-year-old’s stalker cruises, finding out that you were cooler than you thought, and, mostly, laughing. These “kids” were just laughing with glee over what and who they all had, grateful for the chance to go back home to honor their son, father, brother, uncle, childhood friend, Frankie Mazza.

Frankie, as every Fair Haven kid called him, passed away recently. This past Sunday’s gathering to honor him really wasn’t to say “Goodbye.” It was meant to remind all those Fair Haven kids and their kids, too, a next generation, that Frankie, and those “kids” like him, lived and continued to live in all of them.

Who was Frankie? Well, you didn’t have to be that Fair Haven kid or relative to know him or the luck of a rich and fair upbringing haven paid forward. His signature smile told the tale of a childhood crammed with legacy, grace and a whole lot of love. It spoke those thousands of words about a place in their hearts, with people who filled their hearts, called home that some might just call Heaven on Earth. Lucky us.

A girl stood in the middle of the room, always unknowingly cooler than most, seemingly on the outside looking in. She, too, could see Frankie in his corner, taking it all in. She smiled back, turned to me and said, “We were so lucky.”

I looked to Frankie, gave a nod and paid the luck legacy forward as I spoke what the others already knew to the next generation, the kids of these senior “kids” left to grow perhaps outside this Fair Haven of ours, but holding a big chunk of it in their hearts — an inheritance of the finest kind. I said, “You were so lucky.” They smiled a knowing smile back, just like Frankie’s, as if to say, “We know. We’ll take it from here.”

And that’s what true legacy is all about. It’s never “The End.”

Rest easy, Frankie. I do believe us “kids” and the new ones will take it from here!

Take a look at Frankie’s room packed that legacy of luck and love and smile with us … (Be sure to click on one photo to enlarge and scroll!)

— Photos/Elaine Van Develde