Frank Cheney has passed, Weep with Me

Frank, I love you. In 1980 you answered my call; “please drive me to West Virginia to look at this property, I think we will build our hospital there.”

A visitor accidentally had set our house on fire and my wife Linda and my son Zag (Sonny, Alex, Marcia, Wildman and Sabina) could have died. I was at work. Linda and Zag went to her parents’ to recover. I had to stay to take care of the goats. It was a good time for good news. Someone called me about the property in West Virginia. I needed to go see it. It was February and during a blizzard, but you had a four-wheel drive blue pick-up truck, and instantly said yes. In a previous period of your life you worked driving Nitro Glycerine so I knew we’d make the 5-hour drive safely. We walked the land, sat in the rock behind the waterfall and I knew this was the place.

Frank was a part of the original commune and he and I had a deep lifetime bond of friendship. Ours was a love that never, in 38 years of friendship, had any tension. Even though he left the project in 1979, when I had to restructure it, we never faltered in our love. He was in international work and we reconnected around 2000. He, my partner Susan and I had deep and playful moments together, even clowning in DC for the UNHCR.

In the last few years he got very sick as his physical body began to fail him. I have never felt sadder that out hospital was not built and not there for him. I weep that I could not attend to him in West Virginia these last few years. Susan and I drove to North Carolina last winter to visit him, love him and give him some medicine. It was the last time I saw him. We have spoken many times these last few years. Since the last week in January, I’ve called him twice a day to sing to him, to laugh and to tell him I love him. Often I wept, hating that this precious friend was dying, and since our hospital is not built, I could not care for him at the end.

Frank I am sorry. I know you understand. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for finding the home for the hospital. I promise you, I will not stop trying to build. I carry you inside me. We will cut the ribbon together.