Statement by Frank's sister Jeanne at Frank's Funeral 29 August 2018
I like to thank everyone for coming to Frank’s funeral and paying homage to him.
If I looked into a crystal ball and someone said to me years ago that you will be making many decisions on his behalf, I wouldn’t believe them.
But here we are in this beautiful church saying goodbye to my brother, a good friend to us all. Everyone has their own story to tell with regard to Frank.
I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on Frank’s journey through his life.
He started his life’s journey on 3rd October 1949. I came along the following year on 11th oct 1950.
When we were young we did many amazing things together. These included playing for hours with Frank’s train set. He would use every book in the house to construct bridges and ridges and amazing tunnels for the train to go.
As we become older we would play the game Monoply for many hours and days, this would keep us busy for a long time. Every afternoon as soon as we would ride our bikes home Frank would love to listen to the radio program called Tarzan. I think he loved the music best of all.
The dam was a fascination. We spent many hours their fishing for yabbies and swimming with fat gold fish who would love to slurp large quantities of bread down. Swimming in the dam was a great past time as well particularly in the Summer months. As we became older we spent many hours riding our bikes around through the Binya Hills. Some of ours neighbouring kids would come for a day’s picnic which was a great adventure and Mum and Dad would be relieved when we eventually came home unscathed!
A highlight of when we were 7 and 6 our Nana Leaver sponsored us to go on the DC3 flight to Sydney. On the way we were very air sick, so we were very pleased to see Sydney. Sydney was such an amazing place for us as I have lovely memories of venturing on the ferry to Greenwich Point with all its unusual places and staying with our Nana was very special indeed. She took us to many shops to find the perfect gift and it ended up being the beautiful drawing of us shown in the slide show. The experience of this I believe set the scene for Frank wanting to live in Sydney later.
In May each year our family would go on the most amazing holidays to the Central Coast Pretty Beach. We would team up with other friends and go on many adventures looking at colourful rock pools and exploring caves and the headlands around Pretty Beach. The highlight of this trip was a train trip to Sydney, looking out from the Hawkesbury River. and to visit David Jones and going to Her Majesty’s Theatre to see “Orpheus in the Underworld”. As Frank loved it so much he would get dressed up and pretend to be some of the characters in the theatre. Frank loved dressing up in Mum’s clothes and parading down our veranda as he loved playacting and experimenting in being different characters.
As our Farm was an orchard, with many different fruits we would spend many hours assisting our parents with many tasks such as picking the fruit , sorting it , packing it up for the Sydney markets and the local markets and playing with an old draught horse called Betsie. When the apricots became over-ripe, we would have amazing fruit fights which no one won as we all ended up in a mess.
We had good friends of the Lincoln family and they would come out and play the most amazing games through the large golden pine trees in our garden, such as hide and seek and spot the kid with torches at night which Frank liked to win each time.
As a child, Frank started music lessons from the St Joseph’s nuns in Yenda. The nuns could be a little cruel and if you didn’t play well one would be hit. One day the nun hit Frank and he became very angry and told the nun off and ran away. Later the nun told my mother that Frank should return as he was gifted in music, and to say that she was sorry. He then went on to pass his examinations up to the standard of Associate. Frank started organ lessons with Rev. Shearer when he was teaching as being a Christian he thought learning the organ would be the ultimate experience in life. He played the organ for many services at St Alban’s Cathedral in Griffith and I would sing in the choir as well.
At school Frank was his own person with a great sense of humour. I can remember when he played the piano at a school assembly, he was dressed up in a flowing kimono, wearing an amazing hat and singing the song “Jealousy”. The whole high school kids were screeching with laughter and then forever saying to me was that your brother performing. I didn’t know what to say!
Frank was very smart at school and excelled in Maths and Science and gained a scholarship to Sydney University to study to be a Science Teacher. He stayed at St. John the Evangelist College whilst I went to Salisbury Teacher’s College in SA.to study to be a teacher as well.
Frank started his teaching career in the Riverina, that is Leeton High School, Leeton and the Barellan Central School. He enjoyed High School and was very diligent in that at times he would arrive at 5am to begin work, setting up Bunsen burners and writing copious notes on the blackboard for his students to work from. He found teaching to be stressful as the students were a challenge for him. On one occasion one of the students was running on top of the science lab desks breaking his beakers and Bunsen burners and he was able to get the student into a head lock as Frank was very strong in those days. The Principal was not impressed with this action! But Frank couldn’t understand what was wrong with that!
Afer a while, Frank became tired of teaching and decided to be a scientist for a while with the German chemical company Hoechst. He was living at Tamworth at the time. After a while he started to become alarmed at not understanding the chemicals he was dealing with and decided to go back teaching.
He decided to get married in 1980 and had two lovely children Wendy and David. At this time Frank was very proud of his children and his wife Christine home-schooled the children up to College level, and then they joined the various highs schools and then on to University. Wendy became an architect in Sydney and David a Professor in Chemistry in Texas.
Frank was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when he was in his early fifties. This was a brutal shock for him as he led a very active and social life up to this time. Coming to grips with this diagnosis, Frank found it hard and became depressed about his life as he found he couldn’t maintain his marriage and his family life, so he divorced and moved to Sydney leaving the family farm with his wife and children. At this time our mother was living in a nursing home as she was suffering from renal failure, so he thought it would be close to her’
Frank thought that coming to Sydney was the answer as he could have the best Parkinson’s doctors in the land. He discovered Dr Hayes at Concord Hospital, who was his saviour and mentor for many years. Frank tried to mask the symptoms with doctor shopping and administering numerous drugs to himself, ending up in a dreadful state, having nightmares and hallucinating.
Frank developed a good relationship with his doctors and was happy to experiment with medications if he thought that it would bring a miracle for himself. Whilst in Sydney Frank was very versatile in what he could achieve. He had many jobs such as driving trucks, working in kitchens and other pursuits. At this time in his life he became married again as he thought having another family would be the answer as he was lonely in Sydney.
He Met his second wife whilst moving around and working for a circus as he wanted to travel a bit and see Australia, but unfortunately this was not the answer he had been searching for. He again divorced after a short time and decided to be single and have male friends. He also moved around into different types of accommodation such as rented accommodation in Parramatta. Ashfield, Annie Green Mission Australia Hostel, Opal Nursing Home at Stanmore and finally at Hardie Wyoming Ashfield.
When he was staying at Annie Green he went searching for some meaningful company as he wanted to share his skills. God directed him to the south Sydney Uniting Church and he felt like he had come home to people that accepted him for being himself. He didn’t need to pretend he was someone when he wasn’t and it made him become confident and he was able to play the piano and organ for various services. He was elected an elder, which is deemed to be an important role in the Uniting church.
In the last couple of weeks Frank had become very ill and was admitted to R.P.A. Hospital. The staff worked very hard to restore his health but the muscles in his lungs had become very weak and couldn’t maintain his breathing, so he ended up going into palliative care, which was very sad for us all. Right to the very end of his life he fought the good fight and unfortunately, he had to give in.
I would like to thank everyone who have played an amazing role in Frank’s life, and a special tribute to my amazing husband ROBERT who has been a big help in advising people of Frank’s passing, and being a steady rock in my life. I would not have managed so well without him particularly the last couple of weeks.
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