The Oppenheimer Report 7/28/14

One of Frank Riccio's many illustrations

The other day, I learned that my dear friend Frank Riccio had passed on.  I met him when I joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, back in the late 70’s. No, I was not a beer-swilling Animal House frat boy; the Trinity chapter of DKE (Alpha Chi) was anything but that type of fraternity. Yes, we drank some beer, we knew how to throw a great party, and we certainly had the best live music; but the Trinity chapter of DKE also had the highest grade point average of any of the Trinity frats (present company excluded). The members of DKE were largely made up of intellectuals and artists. At the time I joined, the fraternity was struggling, and I first got involved quite by chance,  as a non-member of its eating club. I became very fond of some the eccentric personalities at DKE, and on a college campus where all the food was catered by SAGA, and the eating hall was a giant, informal, fluorescent-lit cafeteria, DKE was a house where I could go to eat good, home cooked dinners and hang out with thirty other like-minded people. It became my community, my quirky little family in a college for which I did not otherwise much care. Ultimately, I became the steward of this eating club, running the day to day operations, and eventually, I joined the fraternity.

DKE was full of interesting members, and because it was the only fraternity at the time to accept women as full members, violating the DKE national charter I might add, we stood out among the other fraternities at Trinity. Frank joined shortly after I did and I think we became friends almost immediately. He lived at the house, and he was a quiet, gentle guy, It was quite a while before I even learned what a wonderful artist he was, because Frank was never one to brag or show off.  He was soft spoken, thoughtful, kind, generous, down-to-earth, interesting, very intelligent, and he possessed a wonderfully wry, disarming sense of humor. He ultimately became a successful painter and illustrator, but Frank was a thousand other things to me. I really liked him. It was because of him and so many of my other brothers and sisters at DKE, that I remained at Trinity, which although it was a pretty good school academically, was in many ways a country club for rich, entitled kids. I eschewed that image, though I was no stranger to wealth and entitlement.

After we had graduated, Frank and I kept in touch semi-regularly by mail. We rarely spoke on the phone. I shared my songwriting with him - he was one of my few friends who thought I was any good, and  encouraged me to continue writing songs - and he shared his progress in the art world with me in the beautiful letters he wrote. Every letter contained some example of his recent work, and sometimes, if I was lucky, he would draw some intricate sketch in pencil somewhere on the letter. I cannot put into words how much those personal bits of art meant to me, and I have them all, somewhere in my letter files. I have a feeling I am not the only recipient of his spontaneous art.

My last correspondence with Frank was in January of this year; it was an email wherein he responded to a recent report I’d written about caregiving. He was particularly moved by my experiences in the Sunnybrook Hospital stroke ward. His mom’s health was failing, and he told me I’d shined a light on some of the dark issues he too was facing. Throughout our friendship, we shared some of our darker hours, and in so doing, maybe we helped each other make some sense of it all. I didn’t know Frank well, but sometimes those are the people with whom we choose to share. He may have known at that time of his last correspondence that he was terminally ill, but no mention was made of it. Now, I am left with those letters, and the memories I have of our communications. It is my hubris that makes me feel I could have been some comfort to him in his last days. I am so sad that  I could not, and I will miss him terribly.

There are some souls that shine brighter than all the rest, and as the ever growing specter of my mortality hovers over me, I am bluntly reminded of the simple fact that this journey goes in one direction. The ugly beast of anti-Semitism again rises in the Middle East and elsewhere, the superpowers are once again rattling their sabers, and we as a species continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. And then there are people like Frank, with his gentle, wry smile, and his disarming honesty. Guys like Frank give me hope that perhaps we won’t screw the whole thing up. He is the hopeful man child, sailing out into unknown waters, absorbing all that life has to give. I love you Frank, and I always will. May you rest in peace.  

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED