A Eulogy for a Life Well Lived

Farewell Frankie, You Are Already Missed

Frank and Clare on their honeymoon in 1959

It is impossible to know where to start when summarizing a lifetime of quiet achievement in just about every facet of life. So, I will make it easy on myself and start at the end. Surrounded by his wife, Clare, his children, and grandchildren, we all joined together, and reached out to him. Thinking out loud someone said — “if you could see this Frankie, you would know that you did it all right!” He did. He nailed it. After almost 86 years on this Earth, Frank Geiser slipped his mortal coil and moved on to the next step in the journey. Whatever that is.

The hospital room around him had been filled for 48 hours with stories and memories of a life well lived. The people gathered there the living proof that he had done well, and left this place with no regrets.

Beginnings

Born in New York City, in 1937 and raised in Glendale, Queens, Frankie described his childhood as being “right out of a Damon Runyan novel.” His grandfather Albert, a German immigrant owned a sweater factory that kept the family well through the Great Depression, and up through the second World War. But as automation and assembly lines used by the competition started to outmode the hand knitting used at Albert’s factory, he opted to sell rather than compromise the quality of his product.

Frankie and his brother Bob’s parents (Anthony — Andy to his friends, and Rose), found other ways to make ends meet. Andy took work at the Manischewitz loading dock when it was available, as well as playing piano alongside silent movies. Rose worked for the city at OTB.

There was a theme here, as the family were surrounded by extended family and friends that made their livings either at the track, or making book on the streets.

Frankie often told the story of a day home sick from school when he was around ten years old. Sleeping on a bed in the basement of the house in Glendale, there was suddenly activity upstairs in the house. He had thought that he was home alone, when two family friends in the business ran down the stairs and into the basement.

Frankie jumped to his feet to see what the commotion was. He was approached by long-standing family friend Tony, who stuffed the days betting slips in the pocket of his bathrobe.

“If anyone wants to look in your bathrobe, Frankie, you don’t let him.” Tony said. He and his partner then scrambled out the back door, through the back of the row houses and likely onto 77th Avenue to make their escape. A few minutes later a pair of detectives started banging on the door. The neighbors, Kitty and Harry (Harry worked windows at the track), appeared at their window, with their shirts removed, acting as if their window was attached to the Geiser house.

“Who’s there, what do you want?” They yelled.

The police responded, but got the impression they had interrupted the homeowners in the middle of a nooner. They took a hint, and abandoned the chase.

Growing up and into high school, Frank met Clare, his soulmate and lifelong partner while working at Dilbert’s grocery in Ridgewood. They courted before he entered the United State’s Air Force, and married upon his return, on Easter Sunday 1959.

While in the Air Force, Frankie was stationed in Birmingham in the U.K. Industrious as ever, he and a friend pooled their resources, and bought a car that they would use to drive the other Airmen into town for their R&R (at a profit of course).

A routine mission that the young radar jammer was sent on, proved to be a moment straight out of a Phil Silvers comedy. Sent by a high-ranking officer to retrieve a cache of German beer steins from a base in Germany (I don’t know which one), the crew of the plane were obliged to run a routine test of the bomb bay doors on their return. With the steins poorly secured, the doors opened, and the crew of the plane found a way to pick the scabs of previous aggressions by bombing rural France, Belgium, or Holland (he didn’t know where they were when it happened), with a crate of beer steins.

Somewhere, a 56 year old resident of one of these places is likely regaling his friends and family with the tale of his father running as the beer steins suddenly dropped into their yard out of nowhere.

Family and Career

Without any idea of exactly what they were getting started, Frank and Clare moved into a modest apartment in Ozone Park for a short time, and then to the Kew Gardens area of Queens. Google “Alice Crimmons” to get the full story on the happenings there, but that wasn’t Frank and Clare.

Clare worked at American Express, while Frank newly certified by the RCA Television Repair School, started work at the Burroughs Corporation. To start, he was fixing adding machines, and check writers. But it was the beginning of a whole new world of mainframe computing, and Frank was on the front lines. Learning the ins and outs of the engineering and on-site repair of mainframe computers, he became a familiar face at banks, insurance companies, and even the FBI.

During that time first in Ozone Park, and then in Kew Gardens, daughters Frances, and Patricia were born. Growing out of the modest apartment, a work colleague gave Frank a tip about the housing market in Staten Island. Frank, Clare, and the girls moved to Staten Island just as the Verrazzano Bridge was being topped off. Their son Christopher (hey that’s me), arrived soon after.

He was OG — Original Gangster of Information Technology (that’s OGIT for short), as the information age started. Unlike some of his colleagues he kept his skills current and kept looking to understand the “next thing” so that he would not be left behind. Reinventing himself several times over his 42 year career, he retired from the remains of what was once Burroughs and is now the Unisys Corporation.

For what Unisys did to the Burroughs reputation (the Burroughs people referred to IBM as “imitation Burroughs machines”), there should be a criminal warrant. Michael Blumenthal a former Secretary of the Treasury turned what felt like a special organization into a fiasco of trying to cover up Sperry’s malfeasance. Jokes of the new Disney movie “Honey I Shrunk the Company” starring M. Blumenthal echoed through our house for a couple of years before even the shareholders and board had had enough and told Bloomy to pound sand.

There was a quiet celebration of that event with tales of “bloodlettings yet to come”, and jokes about “painting the space above my cubicle with rams blood so that the Angel of Death…” (layoffs), would pass him by.

As a field engineer he was a brilliant problem solver. There was nothing he couldn’t fix, and if he couldn’t fix it, he would find out who could and he would get them there.

When moved briefly to management, he was miserable. His return to field engineering was like being paroled.

During his retirement, I had the good fortune to be able to bring him with me on several conference events, working with me and my team on connecting systems, and building on the fly networks to support large-scale events. What could be better? It was a chance to see the pioneering technical problem solving spirit at work. But it always started with the same question: “Is it plugged in?”

Frankie the Man

With the static biopic in the can — let’s unpack Frankie the man. If there was an event, a need, or especially a crisis, Frank and Clare the dynamic duo were always first on the scene to lend support and a helping hand.

Spending a large part of retirmement doing upgrades on their own home, as well as everyone else in the families, they moved more boxes, more miles, more times, than Atlas Van Lines. There were more calls of “get the level”, and “is the breaker off” made up and down flights of stairs than anyone can count. Upon completing a deck build, Frankie performed a legendary “perfect cut” of 28 feet across nearly 60 decking boards without stopping. The level showed all across the cut that it was perfect.

He had a legendary humor, and reasonably good timing. When riled up he would drop his filter and just come out and say it. OK, maybe that wasn’t always great, but it did make for a lot of laughs.

Thinking back to every possible story that can be told as one of his children, I can leave us with something that sums it up pretty well. At the age of 8, I decided to test the limits of the downstairs toilet, but stuffing it continually with toilet paper. I had no reason for this other than my own curiosity, which was suddenly satisfied as the water flowed out of the toilet onto the floor with little sign of stopping.

As he returned home from work, and found me trying to fix my error, he quickly plunged the toilet, threw towels down on the floor and turned to me saying; “go get a piece of paper and a pencil, and write 10 times ‘I must not do dumb things.’ then bring it to me.”

I did as I was told thinking it a horrible punishment. Ten times? WTF?! (I would later learn that this could get progressively worse based on the depth of the offense and my advancing age).

Upon receipt, he reviewed, and handed back saying “OK — now rip it up and throw it away”.

The lesson then was don’t do dumb things. The lesson as I look back is “you’re not stupid, so don’t do stupid things”.

Quintessential Frankie, as he was never one to steer you away from a dream or an idea. He may have told you that it would be difficult, or what the cost would be, but would never tell you that it couldn’t be done.

The parenting style was less micro-management and more of a framework for living. Phrases like “stupid is forever, and dead is a long time” (pretty sure that this one was about living with your mistakes, and it feeling longer while you lived with it than it would after you were gone), “you can, but you’re not gonna”, and “period — end of story” were his way of punctuating his fatherly guidance and essentially signing his name to his advice or suggested path. Not to be left out, “we shall see what we shall see” was his way of telling you not to rest. Whatever it was you were worried about — it wasn’t over yet. He was almost always right about that.

Along the way, we learned what we liked about fried chicken on each “animal night” or Tuesday (that Mom worked late), eating Chicken Delight right out of the bucket with a roll of paper towels, while watching Barney Miller and Taxi. We learned that most of life is physics, that you should never finalize the placement of anything without a level, and that stucco is the miracle cure for any ceiling or wall in need of repair and beautification. With regard to stucco — there are “Original Frank’s” that are still on kitchen, and dining room ceilings all over this nation, that hang like Frescoes and cover the sins of homeowners past that went for bad tiling, or popcorn coverings.

As he was diagnosed with the cancer that took him, I was in France for a bike race. I called home to find out how he was doing, but was unable to speak to him, but he texted me later that night to wish me luck. He was the first to text to ask how I did the next day.

At the End

These stories always end the same way — at an end. Once he understood his diagnosis, he made his wishes clear, gave treatment a try, and accepted the inevitable. For what the cancer had done to his body, the prospects of spending more time in this condition was not an acceptable outcome. A life without regrets would come to a close at 3:57 PM in Staten Island, NY surrounded by those he most cared about, and who cared most for him. He was an original — like his stucco masterpieces — each a one of a kind. As he left us, we were filled with gratitude for the time that we had, the lessons we learned, and the laughs we shared. There will never be another like him.

Godspeed Frank ie— We have held aside a few Camels to make the journey with you.

It’s getting late you got to get the kitten fed
You got to kiss the little woman put the children in the bed
Check the sports and weather and the living and the dead
You don’t have to hear the headlines you can hear what Johnny Carson said

Oh mister sandman won’t you listen to me please I’m saying
I’ll stay in bed but I’ll pretend I’m on my knees and praying
One for my hunger and another for my greed
And just forget about my envy, Lord, and give me what I need
I need a

Last cigarette, last cigarette, last cigarette, one before I go to bed

Excuse the homage to Frankie, with John Easdale’s words on the subject. This photo was in fact, his last cigarette.