I had taken a break from this blog because it wasn’t supposed to be my blog. It was supposed to be the blog for the Advisory Board of the Salem County Office for the Disabled. I resigned from all volunteer boards in Salem County, New Jersey because I want to spend as much time as I can with my family, travelling and doing things that I find interesting. After living three quarters of a century developing several careers and spending decades as a volunteer with disability community organizations and as a coach with youth sports, this last act of my life has given me the opportunity to pursue things that I wanted to do as a young man, but discontinued to get married, raise a family and learn to become an adult and take on adult responsibilities.
I wouldn’t change the course of my life too much because I really love how well my life has turned out and there are so many great memories during this journey. Are there things that could have been done differently and better? Of course, but the last act of my life is not about regrets. I could have retired from my last career as a middle school guidance counselor sooner, but I really loved that career, and by working until I was 70, I received 132% of the maximum Social Security benefit and the cost-of-living adjustments that are part of the benefit. I have always been focused on my finances.
Work has always been a part of my life. A strong work ethic has been a characteristic of almost every man in my family going back generations. When I talk to the other men in my family, we all seem to agree that we were put here to work and take care of our families. We love our families and want our children to do better than we did. Hasn’t that been the American dream? Yes, it has been, but what about the last act of our lives? The part that includes retirement and getting to now get to do things that are just for fun or because I wished that I had a chance to do that when I was younger.
One of the things that I didn’t get a chance to pursue to the degree that I wanted was to play music. I wanted to be in the band in high school and play the drums, but my parents wouldn’t agree to that. Maybe it was because they had four kids in a three-bedroom ranch style house and there really wasn’t any room. I bought a set of drums during college and started playing with a longtime friend that was a music major and very talented. I got a chance to play with him and some of his friends that were music majors, and I loved it. I even got to play with them in New York. Then, I met a girl that I loved more than I loved playing in a band. I still loved playing my drums, but it wasn’t long before they were in their cases and packed away in the attic.
Before I actually retired, I unpacked my drums and set them up in a part of our house that we used for storage. I played them, but playing drums by yourself is not how drums are meant to be played. During a short vacation in Southern Shores, North Carolina with my friend Mark I noticed his guitar and I said I would love to get back into playing music again. Mark has been singing with different musicians in the outer banks for a while and was quite direct. He said, “Frank, if you really want to do it, you will. If you don’t really want to do it, you will just keep talking about it and it will never happen.” I think it was at that exact moment that my last act started to become much clearer.
I was retired, had a set of great drums and just needed to find a way to start playing with other musicians. That shouldn’t be impossible. I spend a lot of time in the Asbury Park area at the shore in New Jersey and there are lots of musicians and places to play music. One of the statements that you here about Asbury Park is that it is where the music lives. I started to make some contacts and then I heard about Lakehouse Music. They have programs for anyone that wants to learn to play music and give you an option to put you in a band with a music coach and pair this with lessons. One of their goals is to get the band picking music and learning to play six songs for a gig that will include about 40 plus of their bands over two days. They put the bands in a very real setting and then it is up to the bands to put in the work. Having people in the audience and the ability to listen to the other bands has a tendency to allow the band to evaluate how well they have done.
My goal is to continue to improve and try to play with as many different musicians as possible. I am 76 years old, and I am not looking to do gigs in bars or try to get a following. The journey I am on is not about fulfilling dreams that I had when I was 18 to 20 years old, it is to enjoy playing music because I love to do that. I have been on this journey for 8 months and this band has gone through a number of changes in the members of the band. But like most things in life, change is always a part of the process, and our bass player has left the band to go in another direction. He has found some other musicians that want to play a lot more and they need a bass player and a drummer. He wants me to go with him. For me, I want to stay with the current band and start playing with a new group of musicians. This last act is really starting to get interesting.
Oh, by the way, I am also learning to speak Spanish, and I am researching family members on ancestry starting right before the Civil War and what brought them to Ocean Grove, New Jersy in 1875. It includes Civil War soldier letters between brothers and family members and how they were able to keep this property in their family and their ties to the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. As I said, this is a very interesting last act of my life.
Abilities Not Disabilities 