Frank Burkitt Passes into the Light
Portrait of Frank Burkitt PHOTO: Rebecca Willis
Longtime resident Consociate Frank Burkitt (November 6, 1927 – September 22, 2015) passed away at the age of 88 at his residence in Reno after battling Parkinson’s Disease for nearly thirty years.
A Memorial Service was held to celebrate his life on Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 11:30 a.m. in the Chapel of the Holy Child. In attendance were two of Frank’s sons, Jeffrey and Norm Burkitt, and the members of the Reno Church Community.
Frank had been a resident member of the Second Advent Community for many years. During that time, he received Third-level Ordination in the Order of The Holy Child and was active in the Second Advent ministry and had sponsored or taken part in a number expeditions to the Chachapoyas region of Peru through the Andean Explorers Foundation. Until he became physically dependent on nursing assistance a few years ago, he was an active participant in a great many facets of Church Community life.
Eulogy for the Reverend Frank Burkitt, written and delivered by the Reverend Amanda Buchanan, October 24, 2015.
Frank Burkitt was born on November 6, 1927, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was raised outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was a chemist at DuPont, and his mother had been a teacher. He had two brothers: William, who was older than Frank, and George, who was younger. Although Frank was born prior to the Depression and the Dust Bowl years, his family was not affected by either. His father, as an employee of DuPont, kept his job during the Depression, and Frank said he did not remember the historic dust storms of 1930s Oklahoma and Texas.
Frank talked about fishing and playing or watching baseball with his brothers. He frequently spoke of his older brother, William. William wanted to be an Air Force parachutist during WWII, but his eyesight disqualified him from joining the Air Force so he went into the Army. Frank said William had been badly wounded in fighting in southern France and was disabled for the rest of his life. This had had a profound effect on Frank.
Frank himself went into the Navy on July 4, 1945. He was stationed on Guam as a member of the SEABEES (the construction crew of the Navy). He helped build airfields on the island, operating the machinery that applied the tar to the field. When I asked him whether he had seen any combat, he said, “only fighting the monsoons.” He and his crew had had to have the tar applied and hardened before those heavy rainstorms came; that meant being on the job at 4:30 a.m. Frank said his most trying “combat” was making himself get up at 3 a.m., as he had never been a morning person. He was discharged from the Navy a year later.
Frank had three big loves in his life: His ex-wife Marylou, music, and pie. Marylou had been Frank’s high school sweetheart. When he returned from Guam, he wanted to marry her right away. His father, however, wanted him to return to college, but Frank did not like college. He was twenty years old and had a job repairing radios. His father told him that if he would wait until he was twenty-one to get married, he would give him $100. As that was a lot of money, then, Frank consented. He and Marylou were married as soon as Frank turned twenty-one. The couple moved from Oklahoma to Kansas City, Missouri, where Frank worked for a company that repaired radios and, later, TVs.
Frank then got the opportunity to work for TWA. The airline trained him to be an airplane electronics technician. After some time in Missouri, Frank was offered a transfer to New York, so the family moved. They lived in New York for many years. During this time, Frank’s daughter, Georgia, was diagnosed with leukemia. She died just after graduating from high school. Frank and his family never really recovered from the loss of the child. The grief eventually destroyed his marriage and estranged him from his family, but Frank never stopped loving Marylou. Even toward the end of his life, when often he could not remember where he lived or what decade it was, he always spoke of Marylou and the things they did together.
Frank’s second love was music. His mother had played the piano and given piano lessons to the neighborhood children. Frank loved to listen to his mother play and even learned to play the piano a little himself. His father had played the cornet and thought that playing a cornet was more suitable for a boy than the piano. Frank’s father gave him the cornet that is displayed there on the table. Frank never went anywhere without that cornet. He even took it on expedition to Peru in 1994, where he would play reveille every morning to awaken the camp.
Frank was a member of a brass band while he lived in New York. The band toured up and down the East Coast. Frank said he joined the band because his wife said he was in her hair and that he needed a hobby. (Frank worked the graveyard shift, so he slept during the morning hours and by early afternoon was up and, as he said, “rattling around the house.”) Frank had a friend in the neighborhood who was in the band and invited Frank to join. Frank not only played in the band, but he bought many instruments for the other band members and searched out music for them to play. (In these last few years, as Frank increasingly had memory problems, every now and again he would ask Rebecca to buy him valve oil for his cornet and would ask me to take him to band practice.)
His third love in life was pie. Frank ate pie for breakfast, saying it was the best breakfast food. But he did not confine himself to eating pie at breakfast only; he would eat several every day. He was particularly fond of cherry pie, but any fruit pie would do. If you took Frank to the grocery store, he would buy 30 to 40 pre-packaged small pies. The supply would not last more than a week to maybe a week and a half. He complained long and hard when the pie supply was cut off because he could no longer go the store to buy them and because we had restricted his diet to reduce the huge amount of sugar he was consuming. His favorite beverages were hard cider, beer, and apple juice. He considered water something to cook with but not to drink. Oddly, nevertheless, Frank kept many containers full of water in his house at all times.
Frank liked to keep things. He would never throw anything away. He claimed hat he needed it or that he might use it or that it may someday become valuable. One time when cleaning his house, I found home-canned dill pickles in Frank’s refrigerator. When I asked where he had gotten the pickles, he told me his wife had canned them when he lived in New York. When I asked how long ago that had been, he replied, “Twenty years ago.” He had taken the pickles with him when he had moved from New York to Reno and was still eating them. He was more than a little upset when we threw the pickles out. We tried to explain how dangerous it was to eat such old canned goods, but Frank didn’t buy it. He said you could keep home-canned things forever. He also had canned food from the store with expiration dates of twenty to twenty-five years earlier and could not understand why they needed to be thrown away.
Frank was nonetheless a very knowledgeable man. He had been a very good electrician. He was also particularly interested in astronomy. He had studied the night sky and knew all of the constellations. His music collection was vast and included everything from classical to band music. He was of course very fond of trumpet music. He had a good sense of humor that was very dry; he was amused by the ironies of life. Frank and I had many conversations and many good laughs. Once you were Frank’s friend you were his friend for life. He will be missed.
