Assume the name
Francis Zuiker, aka Frank the Beachcomber, at a craft fair.
My last couple of posts have mentioned my design project to update the brand for Zuiker Chronicles. I’ve also begun a project to digitize many of the thousands of slides, transparencies, and prints that I have collected from my father and across my traveling. Over on Wan Smol Blog (my microblog), I posted two of the first images I’ve scanned, including a delightful photo of my mother with her parents on her graduation day (from Northern Illinois University). I sent that to mom and she texted back, “My dad took his lunch break during my graduation.” Grandpa Sisco worked at the pharmacy in the DeKalb Clinic at that time.
I’m still working to convert Grandpa Zuiker’s essay about Raven’s Roost, but here I want to share the start of letter that Grandpa wrote to me in September 1996, right about that time that Erin and I had started application process to the Peace Corps. He titled the letter Flight into Fancy.
Life is a tightrope—each step taken forward leads to a new adventure. When I was a tiny, fat little pre-teeny-bopper I faced my dad and said, “Why did you name me Francis? Everybody thinks I’m a girl.”
My dad was a trimmer of Pullman Cars, and a non-ending student of Knocks College. If there was something he couldn’t do, he found a way to do it.
“There is no way you have to be ashamed.” he said. “You were named Francis after your mother and Cornelius after your father, and you are a Zuiker. There are Senators, Supreme Court Judges, Actors, and Generals, and they are all named Francis. It isn’t your name that counts until you do something with it!”
I love the sea. I have probably walked 10,000 miles of beaches and for the last twenty years have gone to countless craft shows and by now the Midwest is flooded with my driftwood fishermen, owls, eagles, parrots and seabirds, and I often think of the endless number of people who are enjoying these items. That’s why in the craft world I have assumed the name of Frank the Beachcomber, but I am still a Zuiker in every other sense and purpose. I often think back to my face-up with my father and I think I have come a long way. When I was a kid at seventy-five I got a thrill out of the fact that I was learning something every day.
I blogged here about the Zuiker naming tradition—my dad is Joseph Francis and I am Anton Joseph—and the nickname (mistersugar) that I took up beginning in Vanuatu. I glad to have found my grandfather’s letter and been reminded of the value of the name I carry.
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© Anton Zuiker