Ave Atque Vale: Frank Zbozny, Rest In Peace

 

My husband, Frank Zbozny (see–I always told you I could win a game of Scrabble in one go, if only proper names were allowed), has died. Many of you know of his decades-long struggle with dementia, and of the cardiac and other physical problems that began to sap his strength in 2012 or thereabouts. But he was himself almost to the end. The last intelligible word he spoke to me was two days ago, after I enabled what I believe was one of his last pleasant physical sensations on this earth (so I did it often), the deployment of a just-warmed-in-the-dryer comforter over the top of him. He smiled. I asked him how that felt. He thought. And over the course of about ten seconds, the courtly and rather old-fashioned gentleman I married, 39 years ago on July 24 of this year (I wrote about that marriage here), managed to get the word out: “Deee–li–cious.”

We started out our married life quite poor, at least in financial terms. I was a Teaching Assistant, and Frank was an Assistant Professor of English, at a time (early 1980s) when a liberal arts career path was beginning to be deprecated in favor of a business education, so he wasn’t terribly well paid. We lived at the very end of a dead-end street, in a run-down little house picturesquely situated just above the exhaust vents of Pittsburgh’s Liberty Tunnels. I was assaulted once, going home after work as I walked up the hill from the streetcar stop. I was fondled by the disgusting creep (kneed him in the crotch), and my purse was stolen. Our house was ransacked one evening when we were out, and the very few items of value, both real and sentimental, that we owned, were taken. (I remember, on both of those occasions, feeling utterly violated. It was three-and-a-half decades before I felt anything else as wrenching, or even remotely comparable in terms of being flayed alive in a public space.) One day, I drove home from work to find gangs of thugs in the middle of the street watching a couple of pit bulls fight in the back of a pickup truck. I had them arrested and carted off to jail. It required a bit more moxie than it might today, as this was well before the days when cell phones were in widespread use. So I parked my car in the middle of the street above them (so they couldn’t leave, because dead-end), walked through and past them, while they jeered and insulted me, walked up the steps of the house, and called the police. Frank’s comment? “You would have made a good United States Marine.” Made me proud then. Almost makes me proud now.

It was, to say the least, an interesting place to start off our married life. Still, we had a lovely garden (auto and diesel exhaust fumes must be an excellent fertilizer and growth stimulant), and with the exception of the wanna-be circus performer woman across the street (Kathy) who regularly threw knives at the bathroom door while her husband (Tom) cowered inside, and the fellow next door (Jimbo) who held raucous parties at all hours of the day and night before succumbing to a drug overdose at a very young age, most of the neighbors (elderly, long-term residents) were lovely.

Twenty years later, we were living on our little farm in Washington County, I was an IT manager at the local community hospital, Frank was a Full Professor of English (he always used to say, “never ask what it is that full professors are full of”) and I was making far more money than he was. That didn’t matter a scrap to either of us, except that I think it made him proud. One of the things that makes me proud is to think that we always delighted in each other’s strengths, and were always supportive and helpful in understanding, and covering for, each other’s weaknesses. (Isn’t that what it’s all about? Frankly (see what I did there), if you answer “no” to that question, I’m not sure I want to know you.)

In between those times, we lived modestly, loved each other, the kids, and the outdoors, and made it through a series of calamities that I’m not sure every marriage could have survived. Michael’s catastrophic head injury in 1981. Sam’s lifelong struggle with severe mental illness, which took such a toll on him and every member of his family, until he was assaulted in December of 2017 and after seven months in a coma, died of his head injuries in July of the following year. Coping for the first few years of our marriage with my father-in-law, a nasty, abusive, alcohol-and-brain-damaged drunk who regularly called me and Frank’s ex-wife with threats to burn the house down or to call the police on us for “scarring” the children. The death of Frank’s mother, an otherwise healthy 87-year old, in a nursing home where she was recuperating from heart surgery, but where she was given the drug cocktail intended for the woman in the next bed, with devastating results. The death of Frank’s former wife, who fell down the stairs and sustained a fatal head injury, in 2000. Michael’s death in an automobile accident in 2002. My brother’s near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2006, and my mother’s long struggle with fronto-temporal dementia. My Dad’s death in 2007 not long after he broke his hip (I was still working at the time, and was glad that Frank helped me out, not long before Dad died, by spending six weeks in England with him, and that they had a chance to form a bond). My stepdaughter’s ugly and protracted divorce. My mother’s bitterness at our marriage, and the fact that it was twenty years after we married before she and my husband finally met. And on and on. Still, we persevered. A good man and (oh, how I hope) a good woman, holding things together, doing their best, and making things work–together. As couples do.

Frank got to be the good man he was through a circuitous route, perhaps starting with his earliest childhood memory (must have been about 1941), which he always said was one of his father giving his mother a black eye. When he was not-quite-eighteen years old and his father, a violent alcoholic, beat his mother senseless for the umpteenth time, Frank punched his father’s lights out, left home, and never went back. You see, insulting, demeaning, belittling, and traducing women simply wasn’t in his nature. And he wouldn’t put up with it when he saw it in others. (His mother subsequently divorced his father, went to school to learn how to be an Operating Room Technician, and enjoyed a long and rewarding career on her own. His father descended even further into drunken madness and his last years were very difficult and messy. I say this as the person who, largely, had to clean them up. It was an object lesson to me that, in many cases, virtue is its own reward and vice is its own punishment.)

Frank had done so well in high school (working class, private, Catholic, inner-city Pittsburgh, skipping a couple of grades) that he won several city-wide science prizes, and was awarded a helpful scholarship to Carnegie Tech. (I’ve told the story many times of his mother hocking her wedding ring to pay for the application fees.) But he couldn’t hack the math, and quickly dropped out of engineering school and joined the Marines. Thank you, Sgt E.J. Kritz. In a few short months, I think you had more influence on the development of Frank’s character than his own mother, no shrinking violet, herself. (You’ll have heard of at least one of Frank’s boot camp brothers, if the name Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper rings any bells.)

Frank was proud, all his life, that he–a gangly, scrawny weakling from Pittsburgh’s South Side –had survived Parris Island boot camp, and he liked nothing better than to tell the story of how he shouldn’t even have made it to Day One. (Another story I’ve bored you with before):

Many years ago, Mr. She walked into the Recruiting Office in Pittsburgh to enlist. I suppose the Sergeant must have liked what he saw, because there was a little problem when Mr. She took the eye test. In short, he failed it miserably. A couple of times.

“Son,” said the Sergeant, “I think I know what might be the problem. I think your eyes are just having trouble adjusting to the light in here. Do you think that could be it?”

“Yes, Sir, I think it could be,” said Mr. She.

“I’ll tell you what,” says the Sergeant, pointing to a chair across the room and about eighteen inches away from the eye chart. “You just go sit over there for a few minutes until your eyes adjust. Then we’ll try again.”

So Mr. She did. Sat right there. Eighteen inches away from the eye chart while his eyes adjusted.

After about ten minutes, and a few more eye tests for other young men, all of whom passed with flying colors, the Sergeant said, “Son, do you think your eyes have adjusted all right now?”

“Yes, Sir, I think they have,” said Mr. She, and he took the eye test again.

Aced it.

I know I’ve had occasion to comment on Frank’s service in the United States Marine Corps on several occasions here, and I think what I said in my post from a couple of years ago, United States Marines I have known and loved. And a couple of others,” is pretty reflective of most of them:

“The United States Marine to whom I committed my life on July 24, 1981 is, of course, Mr. She (pictured above). Not a career Marine. But my Marine. One who volunteered and did his bit. While in the Reserves, he attained his PhD in English Language and Linguistics, and served in a distinguished capacity as a university professor for the next several decades. As [a career USMC officer of my acquaintance] might say, “the world needs good university professors, and good [fill in the appropriate professional position–up to and including dentists] just as much as it needs good Marines.”

Even though, relatively speaking, his years in the Reserves didn’t take up all that much of his life, Frank loved being a Marine, and never tired of talking about his boot camp experiences or his love for the Corps, even when his memories of almost everything else that had happened in the last sixty years of his life had been exhausted or had deserted him. (Yes, bless him, there were many times when I grew heartily sick of the stories, and wished he had someone other than me, perhaps even another Marine, to lay them on. Still, in the best tradition of a woman’s contradictory nature, and right to change her mind, I expect that soon I’ll be wishing I could just hear those tales one more time–especially the one about the donuts, or the one about how he was left in charge one weekend and set a recalcitrant and disruptive grunt to shining the garbage cans until he could see his face in them.) A small investment of his time, a commitment to fight for his country if the need arose, and memories for a lifetime. Those memories never left him, long after others, even those involving me or his children, had.

Late in his life, Frank expressed some regret that he hadn’t stuck with it when he was offered the chance, and I know he’d have made a good officer had he taken up the Corps on it. But he wanted to teach, so he moved on. The Marine Corps’s loss, and academia’s gain.

Frank went back to school, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Language and Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. He taught Old and Middle English language and literature for decades at Pittsburgh’s neighboring Duquesne University of the Holy Ghost, and that’s where I first met him. As my teacher. After an uneventful first class (Chaucer, 1974–he always said I sat in the back, mostly silently, and knitted my way through it, then wrote the best paper he’d ever received from an undergraduate), we caught up with each other again in 1978 when he was recently divorced and I was a teaching assistant.

One of the dearest memories of my life will always be coming into my first class of the day in Rockwell Hall and finding a little bunch of nasturtiums or other small and modest flowers, together with a sweet note, on my desk. I knew where they came from. The students never did. (When the news got out, we were the scandal of the year. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. If it happened today, he’d have been fired, for sure. Maybe I’d have sued him, and then written a book. Or had my own reality TV show. LOL.)

On July 24, 1981, we got hitched in New Hampshire, on a camping trip with the kids (and our Ted Williams tent-trailer, which we bought used for $300. We towed it with a tiny Datsun F10, the ugliest car in the world. And certainly one that was incapable of towing anything, anywhere. The previous year, it had towed the same tent-trailer, and taken Frank and the kids all over the western United States.) Jenny was the flower girl, Sam was the best man, and Michael took the photos. The bride wore shorts. The groom looked like an escapee from a hippie commune.

Frank loved being a teacher, just as much as he had loved being a Marine. And I’m proud that we were invited to so many of his students’ weddings, and that some have kept in touch, even as their families have grown and as they’ve moved on with their own lives. There have been more than a few who’ve said that Frank was the best professor of their college experience, and even one who wrote him into one of his many published books.

Frank retired from Duquesne in 2003, saying that he didn’t feel he could teach effectively anymore, and that he didn’t trust himself to do a good job because he was forgetting too many things. We thought it was a side effect of the Lipitor he’d been prescribed, but perhaps it was simply a shot across his bow from the dementia setting in. As it is with many very intelligent people, its inroads were subtle, and I was slow to spot it. Looking back, I think it started much sooner than I realized. But, from his retirement in 2003 until about 2015, even with all the ups and downs life threw at us, we lived contentedly on our little farm, and even more so after I retired in 2010, mainly so the two of us could spend more time together, as I realized, even then, that the 16-year age difference between us might become more of a factor in our relationship as time went by.

He found great contentment and peace down here on the farm, even at the end, when he’d forgotten almost everything (except the blasted United States Marine Corps, and the aforementioned boot camp), and when he had such heartbreaking difficulty putting the simplest of thoughts into words.

About a month ago, I sat in our little sunroom with Frank and Dixie, the physical therapy aide who’d somehow managed to inveigle him to take the short walk outside (his last walk outside, ever). The flowers had bloomed, the birds were singing, the sheep were in the field, God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. I exclaimed at the loveliness of the farm we had made together.

“I was a teacher,” Frank haltingly explained to Dixie. And over the next couple of minutes, he framed the thought and got it out:

“But in my heart, I was always a . . .”

“Oh, Lord.” I thought. “Here it comes. [Expletive] United States Marine Corps. It really will be the last thing to go.”

“In my heart . . . I . . . was . . always . . a . . . farmer.”

Godspeed, Frank.

My Teacher.

My Marine.

My Farmer.

My Friend.

Jenny’s Dad.

And

Peachy’s beloved Grandpa.

Much love,

Your Wife

X

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  1. Some Call Me ...Tim Coolidge
    Some Call Me ...Tim
    @SomeCallMeTim

    Dear She,

    Please accept my condolences on the passing of your husband, Frank. 

    You wrote a beautiful tribute to a good man, heartfelt and heart-rending.  It must have been difficult to write, but thank you so much for sharing it with us.

    Your tales of Frank’s continual Marine stories resonate with me.  For most of us, being a United States Marine is probably the most significant thing we have ever accomplished and often forms the core of our beings.  However, it seems that Frank accomplished so much more than that, not the least of which was earning the love of a good woman for those 39 years.

    Again, thank you for sharing with us a little bit about Frank.  

    Most sincerely,

    Tim

    • #61
  2. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    My heartfelt condolences. May Frank be blessed in the heavenly farmhouse.

    • #62
  3. She Member
    She
    @She

    Snirtler (View Comment):

    My heartfelt condolences. May Frank be blessed in the heavenly farmhouse.

    Thank you.  A lovely way to think of it.  He used to think a lot about the 23rd Psalm, and imagine a young shepherd boy, feeling the burden of responsibility on his shoulders, sitting out in the field and feeling sorry for himself, and wondering who was taking care of him, and onto whom he could unload all his cares.  Until, suddenly, enlightenment!  “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  I mentioned this several years ago on Ricochet somewhere, and someone, I’m afraid I don’t remember who (perhaps you’re reading this), recommended this lovely little book: A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23.

    • #63
  4. She Member
    She
    @She

    Some Call Me …Tim (View Comment):

    Dear She,

    Please accept my condolences on the passing of your husband, Frank.

    You wrote a beautiful tribute to a good man, heartfelt and heart-rending. It must have been difficult to write, but thank you so much for sharing it with us.

    Your tales of Frank’s continual Marine stories resonate with me. For most of us, being a United States Marine is probably the most significant thing we have ever accomplished and often forms the core of our beings. However, it seems that Frank accomplished so much more than that, not the least of which was earning the love of a good woman for those 39 years.

    Again, thank you for sharing with us a little bit about Frank.

    Most sincerely,

    Tim

    Thank you, Tim, and welcome to Ricochet!  And, above all, thank you, and all your family, for your service.  I read your bio, and see you were a teacher, too.  On that note, I’ll reference our dear family friend Bernie Beranek, also a beloved teacher of mine, who turned a familiar saying on its head and who used to say, “Those who can, do; those who can teach, must.”

    Bernie was also a veteran, of the Navy during the Vietnam War.  My Dad, another gifted teacher, served in World War II, and also in the British Colonial Service (Nigeria) and taught at the same university in Pittsburgh as my husband for fifteen years before retiring.

    Another honorable way to serve, this “teaching” business.  We could use a lot more of you.

    Thanks.

    • #64
  5. She Member
    She
    @She

    Here’s one of my favorite photos of Frank, this one taken in 2004.  He and my brother-in-law had just taken a two-day course (quite hard work, actually) in learning how to be a boiler stoker and driver on the Severn Valley Railway in the English Midlands.  Steam aficionados both, they had the time of their lives.

    The “grand finale” of the event was the each of them got to be the engine driver of the entire locomotive for a portion of its scenic route through Worcestershire. (My sister and I enjoyed “tea” in one of the carriages for the duration.

    Before I knew him, Frank was an avid mountaineer, ice climber and cross-country skier.  I was quite down with the cross-country skiing part of it, not-so-much the rest, and I think people who ice-climb for fun are out of their minds.  He summited Mt. Ranier in 1974, but the best the two of us ever managed was getting within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mt. Washington in November of 1978, on the day of the Jonestown Massacre.

    We didn’t make it to the top because the weather closed in suddenly, but the other thing I’ll always remember about that day was, just before we turned back, a lonely figure who’d come up and over from the other side appearing–the first person we’d seen since we left base, and his exclaiming “Frank!!!”  and Frank exclaiming “Bill!!!” and the two of them recognizing each other as fellow members of the Pittsburgh Explorers Club.

    Being Frank’s wife was, quite often, like travelling along as an accessory to the Grand Poobah.  He held court wherever he went, and he was rarely in an environment where he didn’t know half the people in it, no matter how far from home.

    In 2001, on our first trip to England together (that was when Frank met my mother for the first time, after we’d been married for 20 years and she was smitten–I know this because she subsequently knitted him a sweater, and the women of my family knit for no-one for whom they are not smitten), I managed a coup in that I booked a week at a self-catering cottage that was an old ranger station on the Snowden narrow-gauge railway, and also right at the foot of Mt. Snowdon, so that we could climb it together.  It was an idyllic location, although the weather was not, and we had much the same problems as we had in New Hampshire.  But what a lovely memory.

     

    • #65
  6. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    She (View Comment):
    Before I knew him, Frank was an avid mountaineer, ice climber and cross-country skier. I was quite down with the cross-country skiing part of it, not-so-much the rest, and I think people who ice-climb for fun are out of their minds.

    I can see that. Cross-country gets you from over here to over there. I am fine with that, especially if there is hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua or maybe bourbon over there. But to start here, climb way up over there, just to come back down to here? Ice or no ice, I’ll pass.

    • #66
  7. Goldwaterwoman Thatcher
    Goldwaterwoman
    @goldwaterwoman

    She (View Comment):
    He summited Mt. Ranier in 1974, but the best the two of us ever managed was getting within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mt. Washington in November of 1978, on the day of the Jonestown Massacre.

    Okay, so now we have it that you are a farmer who grows things and takes care of a multitude of farm animals, a woman who bakes her own bread, an expert knitter, a wonderfully talented and prolific writer, a full-time nurse to a dying husband, mother, grandmother and now –dare I say it–a mountain climber? Surely I’ve forgotten something. Hmm. I’m beginning to feel a bit intimidated by you.

    • #67
  8. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    She (View Comment):
    He summited Mt. Ranier in 1974, but the best the two of us ever managed was getting within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mt. Washington in November of 1978, on the day of the Jonestown Massacre.

    Okay, so now we have it that you are a farmer who grows things and takes care of a multitude of farm animals, a woman who bakes her own bread, an expert knitter, a wonderfully talented and prolific writer, a full-time nurse to a dying husband, mother, grandmother and now –dare I say it–a mountain climber? Surely I’ve forgotten something. Hmm. I’m beginning to feel a bit intimidated by you.

    Fluent Hausa speaker.  I’m totally intimidated.

    • #68
  9. She Member
    She
    @She

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    She (View Comment):
    He summited Mt. Ranier in 1974, but the best the two of us ever managed was getting within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mt. Washington in November of 1978, on the day of the Jonestown Massacre.

    Okay, so now we have it that you are a farmer who grows things and takes care of a multitude of farm animals, a woman who bakes her own bread, an expert knitter, a wonderfully talented and prolific writer, a full-time nurse to a dying husband, mother, grandmother and now –dare I say it–a mountain climber? Surely I’ve forgotten something. Hmm. I’m beginning to feel a bit intimidated by you.

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    She (View Comment):
    He summited Mt. Ranier in 1974, but the best the two of us ever managed was getting within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mt. Washington in November of 1978, on the day of the Jonestown Massacre.

    Okay, so now we have it that you are a farmer who grows things and takes care of a multitude of farm animals, a woman who bakes her own bread, an expert knitter, a wonderfully talented and prolific writer, a full-time nurse to a dying husband, mother, grandmother and now –dare I say it–a mountain climber? Surely I’ve forgotten something. Hmm. I’m beginning to feel a bit intimidated by you.

    Fluent Hausa speaker. I’m totally intimidated.

    Oh, you guys are making me chuckle.  Thank you.

    I’m the world’s most useless mountain climber.  First off, I have an inner ear/balance disorder that lets me down in wide open, big and majestic spaces, and I’m always falling over (a terrible flaw, when you’re amongst glaciers and crevasses).  Second, I have absolutely the worst sense of direction in the world and still get lost after 35 years of visiting it, in the rather small indoor mall about 6 miles from where I live (and can never find my car in the supermarket parking lot).  On our expedition to Mt. Washington in 1981, and on our way back down, Frank announced that he wasn’t sure where he was, and needed to consult a compass and the map, and I had a total meltdown, imagining myself being discovered decades later like the freeze-dried corpse of Mallory on Everest. (Still, I can say, with my hand on my heart that Sir Percy Wyn Harris (who Dad regarded as a bit of a twit), the man who found Mallory/Irvine’s ice ax in 1933, was a close colleague of Frank’s and a family friend, so there’s that, which is probably the best mountaineering story I got. )

    I learned Hausa just the way you’re supposed to learn a foreign language; that is, at birth and immersively.  And it still amazes me how much of it comes back with a little thought.  Never really learned to read it, or write it much, but I spoke it colloquially and like a native, which was pretty much how Dad encouraged me to think of myself.  So no real skill required there either.

    Thank you.  Na gode.

    • #69
  10. She Member
    She
    @She

    Jenny wrote a tribute to her Dad on Facebook, and asked if I would like to share it with my friends.  I would, so here it is:

    By any academic standards, my Dad was extremely intelligent. His long list of accomplishments includes writing word-processing software, teaching countless students how to decode complex narratives and allegory, assisting in the development of what we know of as ATM technology, designing and building his own home, commanding several foreign languages, and being an incredible piano player.

    None of that explains that time he insisted he knew how the dishwasher worked and proudly demonstrated it for us. That’s how I learned he’d been using Country Time Lemonade instead of actual soap – for months.

    “Caveat academic standards.” That’s what he’d have said.

    If you asked his favorite thing – depending on what he’d been thinking about most recently, he might have answered “jazz, but not the stupid kind”, “mountains”, “Wilde’s birthday cake”, or “the music of the spheres” but really it was coffee and talking to people that he loved best. Sometimes whiskey.

    He loved to sit with a cup of coffee and turn over ideas. My family have countless memories of discovering him bright-eyed at 3 am in the kitchen poring over a book – waiting to ask questions like, “Hey, why do you figure our fingers are different lengths?” And you’d be off. Somehow, you’d go from digit lengths to world agricultural history to mathematical theorem, then careen around a corner connecting to Medieval or Arthurian Romance – and he’d have them all tied neatly together by 6 am. “Well, that’s that,” he’d say and wander off to bed to think some more.

    Perhaps it was the coffee served in the Lemonade-washed cups. It’s what made him an excellent teacher. He had boundless energy for ideas. He could follow them endlessly, heaping in wisdom like sugar in coffee spoons.

    Intellectual trails weren’t the only ones he pursued rabidly. He loved real mountains equally to intellectual ones and man, he was happy on a trail.  Sometimes irresistibly so.

    I have a very clear memory of a small field of boulders at approximately 11 thousand feet up on a 14’er we were attempting in Colorado.  A cold, vicious wind blew up and I was exhausted.  He and my brothers went on to bag the peak and a few hours later he returned to find me fast asleep where he’d left me – tucked into the curve of a rock.  I was ten.

    I suppose I was used to him scoping out the trail ahead and coming back for me.

    Not all his ideas panned out. It’s a testament to youthful hope that he and my mom married.  In practice it was folly.  Had they stayed married we never have had our stepmother, Louise. It’s a testament to Louise that they enjoyed a very long and happy marriage.

    Had he never married mom we’d never have had the gifts of my brothers, Sam and Mike, nor the upstart-burden who is me. We’d certainly never have gotten to his actual favorite thing – his granddaughter. And he’d never have taught her to swear in Polish when she was four.

    Dad was an outstanding writer and gifted writing coach. I can still hear him delivering my favorite piece of advice, “Done is best, Jenny. Done is best.”

    This past Friday, at 82 years old and peacefully home in his bed, done was best for Dad.

    It breaks my heart to navigate the rest of this trail without him.

    RIP old man. Give my brothers my love.

     

    • #70
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