Eulogy for Frank Jaklitsch, friend

March 19, 2012

I am honored to be permitted to speak about Frank Jaklitsch. He was a person I greatly admired and a friend of mine. He lived an exemplary life and he faced death with the same courage that he demonstrated when his health was robust. Frank was a man of honor. I have been lucky to have not faced such a circumstance very many times in the past. Of course, my parents, and my wife’s parents and our grandparents have all died, along with a few older friends. There is something about a death in the generation ahead of us that is reassuring in a strange way. That is the way it is supposed to be and I could say my turn won’t come for a while yet, because I am younger. The older people die and the young take their place. That is the way it should be and we should not be able to change the reality of that, but sometimes nature or agent orange or some other tragedy changes that reality. Of course, what one can do about this is to change the way one looks at such events although that is getting harder now that I am among that group of older people. I have become convinced that the age at which one is certified as older is much younger than it was when I was a teenager.

We can anticipate going to heaven or perhaps enjoying a rebirth as a more evolved person. I like the latter idea, myself, as long as I am allowed to skip the teenage years and the terrible twos. Frank asked me what I thought would happen when he dies. Of course, we do not really know exactly what lies ahead. What should we say to such a question from a person we care about and want to comfort and a person who knows he is going to die. What came to my mind was a conversation between the two central characters in the movie “Meet Joe Black” which was based on the novel “Death Takes A Holiday.” The man targeted for his coming death asked the collector of souls whether he should worry about what will come next. The collector said that a man like him does not need to fear what comes next. I told Frank that and I really meant it. A man like Frank does not need to worry about a judgment of his life. Any measure of Frank’s life will show him to have been an exemplary human being and I told him that was my professional opinion. I am a professor. I am not a real doctor, but I do know such things.

I first met Frank in about 1979 when he was the 9 year old soccer players’ coach and I was his assistant. We got to run around with the kids and try to have them win games while having a good time. Frank was great with the kids. My job was to give extra advice such as “Aim for the goal when you kick.” And “Kick hard with your feet.” My own kids were on Frank’s team and when I told them Frank had died, they each had the same sad reaction and they each said he was a good man. I asked them why they said that. They each said he was nice to them. He really listened to them and he treated them like he liked them, he wanted them to do well and he respected them. You all probably know the saying that relates to this. It goes something like this: “Whatever you did unto one of the least, you did unto me.” Frank was a man who gave freely of his time, his energy, his good spirit, his kindness and he did so to all who came before him.

Frank had a number of characteristics that I admired greatly. These included his generosity, his capacity for acceptance, his open admiration and support of the success of others, his fairness and fine sense of ethics. You get the idea. He had a stressful job that required great tact and a sense of right and wrong. All the knowledge I had of Frank in that arena showed me that he always advised those above him to do the right thing. Once I asked him if I could get an exception to a zoning requirement so that I could develop 30 acres that surrounded a home in an uppity northern Calvert County community. I got one of the most tactful and kind hearted NOs that I have ever received. I also got a clarification that might have been paraphrased as “it will not happen till hell freezes over.”

Some of you probably know that Frank was an excellent carpenter. He not only had lots of tools, but he knew how to use them and he did beautiful work. If you look around his house you will see evidence of that everywhere. For the purpose of this eulogy, I am going to ignore the really beautiful stained glass windows that are in several places in the house. Diane created the stained glass windows, and they are marvelous. Anyway, a great old tree fell in the woods and Frank not only heard the tree fall but he also realized that tree had the potential to be much more than it had been before it died. He took it to a sawmill and had planks made. He made stairs to the basement from that tree. Beautiful stairs. He was a perfectionist and it showed. He decided one day that his kitchen and the breakfast nook would be nicer if the area was 13 inches larger than it currently was. He then added the 13 inches to that end of his house, and it did look nicer. He was a very passionate carpenter.

I will tell you a story about the time that Frank helped me build some stairs. One day I decided I wanted to build a staircase to get from the second floor to the first floor of my house and from the first floor to the second. Two-way stairs. You could already get up and down using a circular metal staircase that was a bit better than a fireman’s pole. The biggest problem was that our dog had trouble going up and down those stairs, but anyway, I wanted to build a nice oak stairway that would make my dog proud. Naturally, I called Frank to get his help. We had to build a landing so the stairs would come down to the new landing and then take a right hand turn and go down to the floor. It was to be an L-shaped staircase with a big landing. Frank knew how to do that and suggested the plans, which I recognized were good ones.

While we built the landing, which was really a big box, we needed to nail a small two by four on the inside of the box across two pieces of plywood to temporarily hold them together. So, we did the nailing on the inside of the box that was to become the landing and it looked like a landing and we surveyed all that we had made and we declared it to be good. We then built the stringers for the stairs down to the box landing and then we built the stringers from the box landing down to the floor. We cut them out so they were all within an eighth of an inch of each other and they were perfect up and down and in every way that we knew. I knew my dog would be proud of those stairs, not to mention my wife. I was about to declare all that I surveyed to be good, when suddenly, Frank said “Oh oh… we forgot something.” I looked at him and asked what we forgot. He said we needed to open up the box for the landing and get the piece of two by four out of there since it was no longer necessary to hold the plywood together now that we had the box landing built and it was ready to support the stairs and it was now NEARLY ready to be proclaimed to be good, but for that one imperfection. I looked at Frank while I was hanging over the edge of the second floor looking down at the box and the stringers and the unseen fully covered two by four. I was covered with sawdust and I was tired. I asked Frank “Does the piece of two by four present a structural issue?” I could tell Frank knew where this conversation was going. Then I asked him “Frank, is this two by four inside and fully covered by the plywood of the box a cosmetic issue?” He hesitated for a while and finally said that “it was neither, but it really should be removed, anyway.” At that point, I declared all that we had created to be good, and swore him to secrecy and promised him that I would never tell a soul. So I ask everyone here to please keep this our little secret and don’t tell anyone else. This explains why his work was so beautifully executed and why it took a really long time to complete. Frank was a quality person inside and outside. Metaphorically, he built stairs to heaven, while my goal was to get up and down without tripping and make my dog happy.

Finally, I want to note that Frank had good taste. He picked a wonderful southern bell for a wife. Diane has been a great helper, supporter, friend, confident, and all the other things with which only a fortunate man can be blessed. Diane and her friends and family helped Frank these last few months in a truly heroic way that few would be able to match and Frank knew that. Frank knew that he was loved by his family and by his friends. Frank will be missed by all of us, and especially by his wife and children. He leaves a space in their lives that can’t really be filled. It is a space that was filled by Frank’s goodness. It was not a space of unresolved issues. He built friendships the way he built stairs.

We will all miss you Frank! We know that Diane knows that she and Frank are loved and that there are many people whom she can count on for help and support. We certainly can’t replace Frank, but we can be a source for Diane to draw upon.

Thanks for letting me try to put form to some of my feelings for Frank.

Bob Lissitz