Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [162]
Not that I am unhappy—far from it. Frank was the driving force of my life and we lived fast and hard, so it was a big readjustment to the pace without him. Fortunately, I like being alone and have always enjoyed my own company. As Frank used to say, “I don’t need any more friends,” and it has never once occurred to me to get married again. Anyway, where would I go after Sinatra?
I still have the children’s center to worry about and the annual golf tournament to raise much-needed funds. Having put my name to the project all those years ago, I can never walk away from it, and I have no intention of doing so. I just want to make sure that the center and all its wonderful work lives on. I am also involved with the many hospital wings, college halls, clinics, and schools Frank helped fund over the course of his sixty-year career. Tony Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, built a school in Frank’s name in Queens a few years after he died, so that is another part of my husband’s legacy I am involved with. The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts is in Tony’s hometown of Astoria and offers courses in art, dance, music, drama, and film. Tony is the singer Frank handed the baton to; there is no one else around to touch him, and his kind and good spirit shows in his music. He’d always admired Frank so much, and he wanted to do something that he knew Frank would approve of in his name. It is a wonderful facility.
Having spent years listening to Frank taking the time and trouble to call up older women widowed and alone, such as Susie Hornblow, I suddenly found myself one of their number. Only I didn’t have a Francis Albert to call me up and make me smile every Saturday night or to send me flowers on Mother’s Day. What I began to notice, though, was how many of our male friends stepped into that role—surprising me with telephone calls, visits, and gifts. R. J. Wagner doesn’t go two weeks without calling me; neither does Steve Lawrence or Vince Kickerillo (who confessed that Frank asked him to keep an eye on me). Greg Peck used to call all the time until we lost him five years after Frank died. Roger Moore still calls from Europe. George Schlatter picks up the phone just to say hello. Don Rickles rings to crack some new joke. Kenny Venturi, Frankie Randall, Jerry Vale, and so many of those who first met Frank way back when still make an effort to keep me from being too lonely.
Knowing of my lifelong weakness for candy ever since my gummy bean days at Blakeley’s General Store, Quincy Jones sends me delicious heart-shaped ginger cookies every Valentine’s Day. Others drop into my weekly card games if they’re in town. I love to see and hear from them all. There is nothing I would rather listen to than “Frank stories,” for—like all those getting on in years—I now get my greatest pleasure from feeding on the memories of the remarkable life I have led as Frank’s wife.
EPILOGUE
With my granddaughter, Carina, at the beach house in Malibu.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
The Best Is Yet to Come
Every year, on the anniversary of my husband’s death, I go to the desert cemetery where he is buried and lay some flowers before offering up a quiet prayer. It is always an emotional visit, as is the one I make every year on his birthday to the Good Shepherd Church to light a candle.
Each time I go to the Desert Memorial Park, where I will one day be laid alongside my darling husband, I have to smile because his devoted fans have usually gotten there before me. Frank’s grave is one of the easiest to spot among the hundreds in the lush grass carpet. Placed lovingly around his marker are miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s, packets of Camel cigarettes, his favorite candies, posies of flowers, and tiny American flags. One day we will be side by side once more, just as we were for