Farewell Frank

This week we received the sad news that Frank Harvey has passed away. Frank was a member of our committee from 2002 to 2007, and also vice-chairman of the Italy Star Association. Frank was a soldier in Italy during the war and was at Cassino and Trieste.  In later years he often visited his many friends in Italy. Wilma read an eulogy at Frank's funeral on behalf of the Dante Society.  Wilma's eulogy is printed here:

Una vasca da bagno piena fino all’orlo di polenta ...

A bath tub filled to the rim with maize flour, to be sold on the black market by the family where Frank had his officer’s lodgings. He had become friends with them, and the villagers around, and a few signorina, the young girls.
This is the image that most remained with me after I interviewed Frank for the Italian radio programme, Cartolina. (I’m Wilma Laryn and I’m speaking on behalf of the radio program and of the Italian Dante Alighieri Society of Christchurch).
Not the gory recollection of the mud mixed with blood at Cassino, or the entry of the first armoured tank in Trieste. The polenta-filled bath tub was more like Frank’s witty humour.
After the interview, all of a sudden he added: “you know, I could have stayed and married a signorina!”.
I answered, cynically, that in that case he would have loved Italy much less, because he would have had to put up with the Italian traffic and the Italian bureaucracy, more fearsome enemies than the ones with uniform and rifle that he had encountered at war.
Still, the question lingered: what if…..

It seems science is seriously considering a concept that writers of science fiction have been playing with for a long time: parallel universes. It seems possible in the field of great numbers, that somewhere an Earth-like planet, with Earth-like people may have evolved, where each of us may have led a similar, but slightly different life. In one such parallel universe Frank may have settled in a Tuscan village, and his children would have called him babbo, and his great-children would have called him nonno. He would have come to New Zealand at least once a year to visit relatives and friends, and he could have seen a beautiful girl, called Margaret, and wondered: what if….

As all the Italians who now call New Zealand home know very well, having your heart in two places is difficult, sometimes painful. Still, that gives you the ability to look at things and at people from various angles, to understand them better, to interact with them better. It requires strength and humility, brain and heart. Frank had all of the above, aplenty.
Frank was one of the many New Zealanders who went to Italy to fight, and came back with great enthusiasm for Italy and the Italians. It’s from experiences like his that New Zealanders have started to know Italy and love it.

To say that Frank was an active member of the Dante Society Committee is an understatement. For many, many years he has given advice and worked hard on every project we had: from designing the shelves-on-wheels for our library, to envisaging the friendly raffle to raise money at our monthly meetings (using his well-worn Cassino hat to keep the tickets to draw).
For his 90th birthday we gave him a mega-lecca lecca (a huge lollypop): it was an affectionate recognition of his youthful vitality. We knew his age, but somehow that didn’t mean much to us. We were all expecting a new birthday bash, ten years on. We are very sad, but somehow we can’t be really sad. Our real feelings are of love and gratitude; our real memories are of his energy and humour.
Personally, I like to think of Frank living at the same time in those parallel universes, able to be here and there as he pleases. It may seem impossible, but… what if….

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