Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [114]
One by one, His Holiness approached everyone in the room, and when he came over to us I was surprised to see that he had a twinkle in his eye that was verging on flirtatiousness. I bent to kiss the ring on his finger, but he smiled and said, “No, please, you don’t have to do that.” He held my hands in his instead, and we chatted away as Father Rooney spoke of our recent trip. The Pope was so light in his personality and not at all heavy, as I’d expected him to be. It was such a thrill to meet him. Dear Father Rooney, who’d started as a missionary in Nigeria and was sent to America by his bishop to raise money, befriended politicians and movie stars, singers and priests. He was an incredible man who raised millions for the needy, and I feel blessed to have known him.
Returning home from my audience with the Pope, I was honored with a special award for my fund-raising efforts for a multiple sclerosis charity I’d become involved with. It was presented to me by President Jimmy Carter in the White House. My friends in New York had all been in favor of Carter when he first ran for president and told me he would win, but I’d said to them, “Are you crazy? No one’s ever heard of Jimmy Carter!” There was such a machine behind him, though, that he got in. At the presentation in the Oval Office, he kissed me on the cheek, and a photograph of that kiss subsequently appeared in all the newspapers. One of my New York friends called me up and said, “Now you know who Carter is!”
Around the same time Frank was presented with the Variety International Humanitarian Award by our friend Henry Kissinger for his philanthropy over the years. In a televised all-star party for the man they called Mr. Anonymous, Richard Burton described Frank as a “giant.” He added, “Among the givers of the world, he stands tallest. He has more than paid rent for the space he occupies on this planet, forged as he is from legendary loyalty and compassion carefully hidden … hidden because he has ordered it.” Frank was, Richard said, “truly … his brother’s keeper.” The club announced that the money Frank had raised had led to the creation of the Sinatra Family Children’s Unit for the Chronically Ill at the Seattle Children’s Orthopedic Hospital. What a legacy. There was more to come. The same year Frank was one of five recipients (including his friend James Stewart) of a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contributions to American culture, given to him at a televised presentation. During a reception afterward at the White House, President Reagan told him, “You have spent your life casting a magnificent and powerful shadow.” Two years later, Reagan also awarded Frank the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his humanitarian work.
One of the organizations that had benefited most from Frank’s support was the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, where many friends had been treated. In the early 1980s, he organized a series of benefits for the hospital at New York’s Radio City Music Hall featuring stars like Diana Ross and the opera singer Montserrat Caballé. Because of its extraordinary finale, Frank called one show “The Italian Hour.” At the top of the bill was a double act starring him and the opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.
Thanks to his heritage perhaps, Frank loved opera and often listened to it very loud when he was painting in his studio. Opera depressed me because it was so solemn and almost always about death and tragedy. I like to smile and I like things that make me smile, but that’s not most opera. Frank felt very differently, and Pavarotti was one of his favorite singers. He’d wanted to meet him for a long time, and