His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [234]
As the paterfamilias, Frank reached out to take care of those who took care of his mother.
“I got into all of his concerts free,” said Sister Consilia. “His secretary would hold tickets for me, and I’d just walk backstage to say hello to Frank before the show. You know that no one gets backstage to see Frank. He has his bodyguards standing there, and you can’t pass through them unless you have permission, but I always got through because I’d go to Jilly, and he’d let me back to see Frank. Of course, it wasn’t the same after Dolly died, but while she was alive I saw all his concerts.”
“Frank was good to his folks, real good,” said Al Algiro. “He bought them their place in Fort Lee and was always sending Dolly diamonds and furs and stuff like that. Marty got a lot of real nice golf sweaters. One time, Frank came to visit with Rosalind Russell and Charlotte Ford, and he wanted to watch Frankie Junior’s television special, but all Marty and Dolly had was a little black and white TV set. Frank nearly went nuts. ‘You mean this is all you got?’ he said. He couldn’t believe it. The next morning, he sent over three huge twenty-five-inch color sets, and Dolly called me to come and install them.”
After his father’s death, Frank raised $805,000 to endow the Martin Anthony Sinatra Medical Education Center adjoining the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. He also wanted to build a house for his mother next to his own in the desert. He was determined to move her out of the grimy industrial East, with its insufferable weather. But when he broached the subject of her moving to the West Coast, Dolly wouldn’t hear of it. She was adamant about never leaving New Jersey.
“She told me she didn’t want to go to Palm Springs because she didn’t like Frank’s friends,” said Nancy Siracusa, the food editor of the Hudson Dispatch. “Dolly said, ‘I don’t want to move out there with all those bigshots.’
“One reason Frank wanted to get her out with him is because he didn’t want her involved in the community here. He said he didn’t like people using her and the Sinatra name, but Dolly loved throwing benefits like the one she did at the Stanley Theater in Jersey City for the St. Joseph’s School for the Blind. She raised thirty thousand dollars that night and had everyone there, including the governor, and John V. Kenney, the big political boss of New Jersey. That’s when she wanted Jimmy Roselli to sing, but he refused to do it; Frank got so mad at him for turning down his mother that he never spoke to him again.”
Frank continued to beg Dolly to move to Palm Springs so that he could take care of her, but she said she would never leave her husband’s grave untended in Jersey City. Who would visit it and take flowers? Who would have the commemorative masses said at the Madonna Church? Frank promised to move his father’s remains to a crypt in the Desert Park Memorial Cemetery, a few minutes drive from his house in Palm Springs, if she would change her mind.
Dolly had stayed at her son’s compound many times and knew of its splendor—the pools and tennis court and guest houses, the railroad box car that had been converted into a health spa, the helipad and all the servants. She still didn’t want to make the move. Frank pleaded, saying he wanted her to be able to spend more time with her grandchildren. He even dangled the prospect of great-grandchildren in front of her, saying how terrible it would be if she were not there to share those joys with her family.
He flew to Fort Lee with