Another American Adventure: Frank Arbusto 1918-2011

Monday, October 17, 2011

Frank Arbusto 1918-2011

This is Frank Arbusto, born 11/11/1918. We met him 25 years ago when he came onto the altar to marry John's mother in 1986, We thought he looked like an Italian organ grinder! We came to love him.

Frank died yesterday morning in New Rochelle NY. A man of much character and dignity, he charmed our dinner tables with stories of boats, his childhood, and the opera.

We also knew Frank as "Oompa", since he married "Ooma". He's the only grandfather Eric ever knew.

We love you Oompa. Rest in peace.

[Jubilee and I have delayed our trip to FL in order to attend Oompa's funeral in NY this week. Not sure when and how we are getting to FL now.]

1 comment:

BarbaraOctober 19, 2011 at 8:40 AM
Safe journey and may your Oompa rest in peace. He looks like an interesting and warm-hearted man. That photo of him walking with his wife is so poignant.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.