Many people love the hilltop campus Andover Newton called home for so many years, but no one loves it in quite the way Frank Cavaco does.  After all, Frank’s love of the campus is a “for better and for worse” kind of love. To be sure, Frank appreciates the bucolic beauty of the quad, as well its stately buildings, as much as anyone.  But, as Director of Buildings and Grounds for 23 years, Frank sees, like no one else, what is required to maintain the campus—the broken steam pipes, the leaky roofs, the potholes, every one of our twenty-two buildings in need of repair.  To see all of that and to love the campus still is quite a testament.  It is a love expressed through early mornings and late nights, leading a staff that is stretched thin, and doing it all with an equanimity and good cheer that is truly remarkable.

 

It did not take long for me to see that Frank loves the campus because he loves the school.  For him, it has never been about buildings and grounds.  Not really.  It has been about the mission of the school and the people who comprise the community that is Andover Newton.

 

Every year Frank would don a three-piece suit to serve win at the Commencement reception on campus.  One year he told me this telling item:  Each year at Commencement he would receive a tassel—like the one on the graduation caps—and hang it on a string in his house.  23 years, 23 tassels on proud display.  No, it has never been about just buildings and grounds for Frank.  And that is why, for his long and distinguished service, we have conferred upon Frank the honor of Staff Emeritus.

 

Before we completed the sale of the campus, I told the new owner, “You have been very good to us.  Now I want to do something good in return.  Our Director of Buildings and Grounds is a man named Frank Cavaco…”  And then I told them about Frank and what an extraordinary person he is.  Now Frank works for the buyer, still caring for the campus he loves.

 

by: Martin Copenhaver