Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

At the end of last week I sent out a package of notices to a number of my clients. It was time for annual renewals, a time when I would always touch base with clients who had websites that didn’t have regular changes.

I am saying goodbye-passing along many clients who are ready to do renovations and updates- making this year a tough year to send these notices out.

CapeCodSportsReport.com was one of the sites I had decided I would keep as long as he needed just updates because I had been doing them without charging him. Frank has been there through all of my years of school sports with my kids. The tall, thin, bearded and be-speckled presence that was a part of the patchwork background of many a victory or defeat year-round, at any sport the kids were playing.

I just read, on the CCTimes midday update, that Frank died of cancer this weekend.

Wow.

I usually hear from him regarding his website only during the Cape Cod Baseball season. In April or May we would update the site and talk about what the coming season would bring.

Frank is gone? I didn’t even know he was sick.

This is the first year I have had no children in the Barnstable School System, and I had only been to a couple of volleyball games in the fall. Was Frank there? He must have been, he always was, but I can’t remember.

Frank was an institution. There was no one more dedicated to the sports life of our school-age kids. I could never understand how he managed to be in so many places at one time.

When my oldest was a college freshman two years ago, I would run into him at games and tell him she was loving college, but that we were so unhappy that we couldn’t get to see her play in Florida. This was a conversation we had more than once; the first time we discussed it he surprised me when HE told ME her current college stats.

“Her coach isn’t playing her much, but she was in and got two aces in last week’s game against Eckerd College.”

He was proud of the fact that he followed many of the High School star athletes into college. He had a direct line to the college athletic directors’ PR people.

Frank was so dedicated to his newspaper. He wrote the stories, took the photos, and did the lay-out and paste-up.

Not many people knew how incredibly talented a photographer Frank was. I would get his photos via email to put up on his website. When he switched over to an impressive digital SLR camera, the images came to me pure, not scanned, and I was in awe. I told him many times over the past couple of years that he should sell his photos. He had a keen sense of balancing a shot and the ability to capture the perfect millisecond of time where a bat hit a ball, or of a runner sliding into a base with his toe touching the bag and the catcher’s gloved ball not quite getting the tag. I didn’t need to crop many of his photos; the shot would fill the frame.

I remember seeing him with his camera at a fall concert a few years ago, one of the few annual programs where the entire BHS music department would make up an evening of impressive entertainment. I was confused. He was a sports reporter; why was he covering a concert? He explained, clearly with pride, that his daughter was singing. And, what a talented singer she is, well deserving of her father’s pride.

I didn’t even know he was sick. I really didn’t see much of him last summer– we were in touch via email mostly. He would send me updates for his site with a few comments about life and kids. I haven’t seen the paper for a while; it is one of those things we would pick up if we came across it. I didn’t hear from him after the baseball season, and was expecting to get an email any day now.

I am so sorry that that email will never come.

Thank you so much Frank for all the attention you gave to our children. Thank you for your tenacity and for always being there.

We will miss you, Frank.