10— Family

The four DeFrank progeny—Peggy, “Zip,” Jeff and Matt--are different in many ways.  Yet when they talk about their father, they have more in common than even they might have realized. 

Each was asked in separate conversations what was it like to grow up in a house with a coach for a father?   They might as well have sat together for the discussion.      

“I never thought of him as a coach,” Peggy, the oldest of the four, responded.  “He was my father and this was just something he did.  People say, ‘You’re Harry DeFrank’s daughter.’  But we never thought of him that way.  He was just our father.”

“Zip,” the oldest son--they called him “Zip” so there wouldn’t be a Harry Jr. around the house—came to understand as a young boy that his father was a coach.  You tend to pick up on those things when you accompany Pop to his team practices…”I knew no different.  He coached me ever since I can remember being involved in sports.  For us, that’s what he did.”

Harry DeFrank being Harry DeFrank with his life-long affinity for most sports at all levels, it probably was impossible for the children not to become interested if not involved in competitive athletics.  Jeff says his father “never forced us to do athletic things,” which he thought was “kind of neat.”  But for Peggy, as the only girl, learning about sports was almost a matter of survival if only because of the sheer number of athletic males in her household.  "I developed immediately a love for sports,” she recalled.  “Í had no choice.  I had no choice.”

Given the bloodlines of this family, sport as often as not was the familiar and favorite topic of conversation when the members gathered as a unit.  Dinner time, in particular.  Dinners, Matt said, always revolved around his father’s practice schedule.  “We kind of squeezed it in when time was available.” 

Coaching, just by the nature of the job, took DeFrank out of the house quite a bit as the kids were growing.  But that was fine with his wife.  “He always took the kids with him,” Jean DeFrank said, “and that was good.  It was good for them; it was good from him, and it was good for me!”  The kids remember those days, as well.  Good memories, they say. 

“When he was coaching us in grade school…when we went to basketball or football practice…when we were playing for him…we were always with him,” “Zip” recalls.  Matt adds:  “I used to tag along with him to practice for as long as I can remember.  It was pretty neat to be around it, to be around the game and learn as much of it…the fundamentals, passing, dribbling…as I could.”

Among Central Pennsylvania sporting legions—coaches, fans, the press—Harry DeFrank has a “nice guy” reputation—“a nice guy until things aren’t getting done his way, and then somebody’s going to hear about it,” was the way one coaching colleague put it.  But this also is one “nice guy” who, if he is anything, is as competitive as they come.  His kids saw that up close and personal. 

“He doesn’t like to lose,” Peggy acknowledged.   “As he’s gotten older, he seems to have gotten over that.  It (a loss) doesn’t stay with him the way it used to.”  But in those early years at Trinity, he found it harder to adjust to a loss.  “He used to talk with my brothers on the phone…’What if we had done this, what if we had done that…’”

Going to games…not surprising, that’s something that was second nature in the DeFrank household.  As least for as long as the kids can remember.  “We used to go to football games at Steelton when I was hardly old enough to walk,” Peggy recalls.  “Every Saturday afternoon, we’d go down to Steel High and watch football games.  It was more than just basketball.  It was just so in his blood that it had to be in everybody else’s.”

Peggy was right, it’s just so in his blood. Even as he approached age 80, Harry DeFrank was a regular Football Friday Nights attendee at Trinity’s COBO Field.  He could usually be found standing quietly along the wire fence near the end zone.   But his time was not spent uninterrupted.  Fans, friends, former players…many of them come over at some point to say hello.  And the kids.  The kids…the boys…in particular.  “Hey coach, how’s it going?” they say.  Harry reaches out to shake their hands. “How you doin?’,” he responds. “Everything OK?  That’s good…that’s good.”

His rapport with youngsters is instinctive, certainly not programmed.  That’s another trait his sons remember about their father.     

“When I was 4, 5, 6…we were living on Park Street in Harrisburg,”  “Zip” recalled.  “We’d be out throwing a baseball or passing baseball in the backyard or the alley.  And if we weren’t, the kids still would come around, all my friends, and they’d say, ‘Can Mr. DeFrank come out and play?’

The experience apparently registered with the neighbor boys, as well.  Jeff tells of attending an Easter Sunday Mass a couple of years ago which was officiated by Father Stephen Weitzel, one of those early-year neighbor boys.   “His sermon was about those games,” Jeff recalls.  “He said he was not very athletic, but he told of how my father told him one day to get in line.  ‘I just want you to catch the ball, young man,’ my father said.  And Father Weitzel told the congregation:  ‘I wasn’t very athletic.  I couldn’t compete.  But when I caught the ball, it was like a new start on life.’  That’s what the Easter sermon was about, getting a new start on life.  I was amazed that he remembered that the way he did.” 

Ask the offspring if they’re surprised their father’s been coaching for so long, and, once again, they’re on the same page.  Maybe not “Zip,” perhaps, because he’d been there himself and knew how demanding it can be.  “It wouldn’t have surprised me if he did it for 5, 6, 7 years and gave it up,” he said.  “I’d done that, so I knew what it was to put up with kids that are in high school and parents, and all that kind of stuff…”  But, on reflection, “Zip” concludes, no, he wasn’t surprised.  “He enjoys it, he enjoys it all…films, writing coaches, basketball clinics and summer camps…he does it all year around…so, no, it’s not surprising he’s been at it so long.” 

 "It’s healthy for him,” Peggy said in summarizing the family’s sentiments.  “If he didn’t have it, I don’t know what he’d do.  It’s a 12-month cycle with him.  I think he’ll be at it until he can’t be anymore…”

 And what is it the DeFrank offspring see in Harry the coach and Harry the father? 

 From “Zip,” you get:  “He wanted you to be as good as you possibly could be.  He didn’t want anybody coasting.”

Or this from Peggy:  “He’s very competitive, very demanding of his players.  Just as he was of his children.  I heard his players say, ‘When he’s screaming at me, I know he wants me to be better.’  That’s the way he was with us.  I think he looks at those kids (his players) as an extension of his family.”

From Jeff:  “Respect, humility, living with what you have.  He’s from Steelton and they’re very competitive people, the greatest people in the world.  They play hard to beat you, but when it’s over, they’re the first to pat you on the back and shake your hand.  He’s learned to live with what you have.  And he never runs up the score because of the respect he has for the game and the opposition.”

Matt sums it up this way:  “When things aren’t going real well, that’s when you really need to concentrate on what needs to be done.  Don’t back off…never back off when things are not going real well.  Push ahead.  I noticed that in both worlds, if you will.”

And what should their father’s legacy be? 

“I hope it’s not just about winning or losing,” Peggy responds.  “I hope it’s about how he helped young people better and further themselves in life.”

“Whatever his legacy will be, I think it will stretch past Central Pennsylvania, that’s for sure,” Zip adds.  “And I don’t think that has anything to do with his won-lost record.  I think it has more to do with what he does for kids, particularly those kids that are capable of playing at the next level, whether they played for him or not…

Jeff puts it this way:  “It’s going to be about more than putting the ball in the hoop.  It’s going to be about the kids who graduated from his program and how they went on with their lives.  That’s going to be the best testimony to what he’s done.”

Finally, from Matt:  “I think a big part of it will be the number of wins he’s achieved, obviously.  But it should be more.  It should be about the type of kids who came through his program and the type of young adults they turned out to be.”

His players would concur. 

 Copyright (c) 2008 VPC, L.L.C.