Tuesday, May. 13, 2008
Remembering Frank Cambra Jr.
By Rory Moore
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ReprintAlthough four years have passed since my friend Frank Cambra Jr. left this world, he is still in my thoughts regularly. Frank and I were friends since about 1971 and he was the guy I envisioned hanging out with into the sunset. Our families got together regularly on many occasions through each year, we attended the same church together for many years, and Frank and I even shared the same birthday -July 12. Frank was four years older than me.
I still recall the first time I ever met Frank; it was at the little house on Pacheco Boulevard., down from the 7-11 store. I had gone over there with Dennis Soares and Jerry Barcellos to talk about some weightlifting equipment and looking for a place to work out. We were all outside in the small detached garage discussing the weights and I took note of the large stacks of sports magazines and an equally impressive stack of Playboy issues. We never let Frank forget about that collection over the years.
From that day forward, Frank's paths and mine kept crossing.
He was on the rival "Meadowgold" baseball team which we played against, in the championship softball games over the next few years. One year we beat them (We were "Bonanza Liquor," sponsored by George and Doris Carlucci), and the following year they beat us on a cold, windblown, September night.
The baseball games led to the post game parties, some of which were held at the Cambra home on Pacheco Boulevard. I fondly recall seeing Frank and Hope's two little girls, Charmaine and Melissa, giggling and peeking around the corner from the hallway like a couple of cute chipmunks at us party revelers. Those parties also introduced us to Frank's extended family and in-laws, and we found ourselves invited to more and more Cambra social events.
Frank was always looking for a better life and so in the mid-seventies, he and I formed a business partnership named Sea Breeze Mobile Wash. This ill-fated attempt at business led us into a number of hilarious disasters.
Sea-Breeze was a steam cleaning pressure washing service that employed a large, propane fired heating unit in the back of a 1965 Chevy truck. You opened a valve, much like the one on your barbecue and stuck a piece of flaming paper down underneath where the burners were. If it sounds a bit dangerous, it is because it was, and many times the propane ignited with a ground-thumping "KAAWHOOMP!"
One night, with the truck and propane-fired machine parked inside the closed and darkened Merced Mall, we prepared to service the Orange Julius. That night it happened that we really ignited that burner. The resulting explosion shook the store-front windows and doors for 30 yards in each direction, a young security guard screamed and jumped about three feet in the air. Fortunately there was no damage... on this occasion.
The next time we were in downtown Los Baños at Eddie's Café, which was then owned by Eddie Aragona. Eddie had let us in about 7 p.m. and left us so he could go bowling at the old Soares family Los Baños Bowl, located where Sav Mart center now is. We began our job in the old brick building on 6th Street (across the alley from Don Hughes Studio) and Frank climbed up into the second floor attic area right over the kitchen. He was walking around up there when I heard him yell out. I quickly went outside and around to the back and climbed up the ladder. There I saw only the upper half of Frank's body as he held onto a couple of cross beams, -the lower half of him had disappeared! As Frank looked at me, I said "Frank, please don't tell me." He replied with a simple "yep."
I went downstairs and ran into the kitchen, and there was Frank's lower body, sticking down through the hole he had just created in the ceiling of Eddie's kitchen, his legs dangling about a foot above the shelf where the dishes were stacked.
Construction was not our forte, so we duct-taped the hole closed and called Eddie down at the bowling alley as there was no point in concealing the damage. Eddie arrived and actually took it pretty well.
Our partnership began to waver and the final blow came one early evening as Frank and his helper Jerry Barcellos, were returning from a job in Modesto on an August evening around 8 p.m. Out on 165, not too far from the San Joaquin river bridge, as Frank and Jerry chatted while enjoying the drive, Frank happened to glance in the rearview mirror and his eyes got huge as he shouted "We're on fire!" -somehow that propane unit had charred the wood floor of the truck bed unobserved, and the fanning wind of the 60 mph truck speed turned the back of the truck into a flaming fireball.
Quickly pulling over, it happened that a passing motorist with a fire-extinguisher stopped to put out the flames and a shaken Frank dropped the truck off in front of my house, never to venture out again. Our business partnership went down in flames, but our friendship survived.
As the years passed, many more social events at the Cambra's followed and we watched Frank as he made his way through life. He had his share of struggles, they had moved from the tiny home on Pacheco Boulevard over to F Street, and Frank went through several career changes. He worked at Dairymans, he was a driver for Budweiser (his "dream" job, or so he thought,) and some other endeavors followed. He bought a bait shop in Santa Nella but that didn't work out and the Cambra family ended up moving to his parent's property on Ortigalita Road into a new mobile home, near the corner of Pioneer and Ortigalita roads.
During those years, Frank's love for sports and young people merged and he once again changed careers, getting his teaching credentials and becoming a Physical ed. teacher at Los Baños High School. He and his wife became entwined in the high school scene and the lives of their teenage daughters and friends. Frank became the basketball coach and also taught during summer school.
Both of our lives had also paralleled on another plane, -we were both searching for more meaning, peace, and fulfillment. We had tried various forms of spiritual enlightenment, yoga, New Age-ism, materialism, and other ideas without success. At last, in 1979, I turned to Jesus Christ and began to read the Bible and attend a church. Not finding the answers in his family's church, Frank eventually began to read the Bible also and came to personal faith in Jesus. Frank got saved.
We both settled into the same church and our two families remained in constant contact.
Anniversaries, graduations, weddings were all shared events.
As the years passed, Frank would often stop by our house unannounced, and we would talk for a couple of hours. I found myself being a shoulder for Frank to lean on or simply listen to as he aired out his thoughts and feelings. There was a fair amount of turmoil in his life and losing his own dad, Frank Cambra Sr. added to his list. But through it all, Frank continued strong in trusting the Lord and gave witness of his faith continually to those around him.
Frank and Hope had a special gift for bringing people together, whether it was an after church spaghetti lunch or one of the shared birthday parties given for Frank and myself on one of those July 12ths. That guy could eat, and no one could eat faster. Food was for inhaling, not chewing, in Frank's book.
In keeping with his image, Frank made it a purpose to wear shorts every day of the year, barring the times when a formal occasion demanded dressier attire. He also specialized in T-shirts which sported various messages or statements that Frank wanted to get across, and for a year or so I recall him wearing a pair of red athletic shoes. We used to joke with him about those red tenneys about how cheap they must have been on sale. An old, sweat-stained baseball hat usually adorned his head, while his face was noted for various versions of thickly whiskered beard styles. His mustache ebbed and flowed from reaching over to his sideburns, dropping down into a fu-manchu, a goatee or a full beard.
Then in 2002 Frank was diagnosed with leukemia. We all prayed and encouraged him as he chose to go to Stanford for treatment. It seemed to go real well, Frank had always kept himself in top physical condition and for a time it seemed he was going to dust that affliction into the can. After about a year of treatments, he went to a health clinic in San Diego for a couple of weeks, and upon his return began consulting with nutritionalists and some alternative medical devices. Frank had a lot of determination and fight in him and he was determined to do everything he could do in order to give his body a fighting chance.
He had gone back to Stanford for a secondary experimental treatment having to do with bone marrow. But Frank was starting to suffer and lose weight along with other symptoms. As we with alarm watched him deteriorate, he continued to go to work as a teacher, but he was struggling trying to tough it out. Some of his friends and associates encouraged him to stop working; -Mike Villalta, Frank Stone, and Coach Don Toscano all expressed heartfelt concern for Frank. But Frank was a tough cookie and kept at it until one day he collapsed and could not go on in spite of his iron will.
On July 12, 2003 Frank and Hope had one of the biggest parties out there on Ortigalita Road in their personal history. A lot of friends from the old Meadowgold baseball team came to the house, some from as far as Sacramento and Reno. Others came from Bakersfield, Fresno, many other places, and of course there were many from Los Baños. It was like a multi-year class reunion and we had one of the greatest get-togethers ever. For about 90 minutes many of Frank's friends told Frank Cambra stories and the crowd roared with laughter. (Mine was one of the Sea-Breeze stories).
No one knew it at the time, but that party turned out to be Frank;s farewell to his many friends, enjoyed the conversations and food, Frank spent a lot of time in "his" easy chair, as he just did not have the energy or stamina to mix with the crowd.
Frank was dying.
Denial is a powerful psychological mechanism and those of us who loved and wanted Frank to be normal again would look at him as he lost weight and suffered, believing that somehow it was going to change and he would become like the Frank we always knew. After church on Sunday afternoons Frank would still drop by and we would chat but it was getting harder and harder to believe he was going to make it.
Toward the end, we talked of preparations he should make, and some of them were taken care of, but others remained undone. It seemed he was going to the local hospital about every other week for blood. Those visits were so numerous, we did not always go visit him if he stayed overnight,-we would just wait and go see him out at the house.
Then one night, St. Patricks Day, March 17, 2004, a little over a year after I lost my own dad, we got a call to hurry and come see Frank while we still could. We rushed over to the hospital, but it was too late, Frank had left this world. As I looked into the face of my longtime friend, the veil between this world and the next was almost non-existent, I could feel eternity.
The service was held in the gym at the Los Baños High School, the place where Frank had spent countless hours. A huge, over capacity crowd gave tribute and honor to Frank as we shared our loss. I was in awe at the turnout, but the truth is very few knew Frank as well as I did. He was the friend I was looking forward to spending time with in our old age.
Frank was a great friend, a unique character, a very self-disciplined role model, a son, husband, father, teacher, coach, sportsman, and a Christian. He was my friend.