SERVICE
Memorial service in honor of the life of Frank E. Cummings.
2 p.m. March 26 at the Atlanta Friends Meeting, 701 W. Howard Ave., Decatur.
At 11 a.m. Friday, Frank Cummings took his last breath, at peace with his life and death.
The loose ends all tied up. The goodbyes done. His sons, Mark and Andrew, at his bedside.
After his wife, Carol, died suddenly 10 years ago, Frank Cummings was determined that when his time came, he’d be leaving on his own terms.
And so early this month, after months of inconclusive treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood disorder, and acute myeloid leukemia, Cummings decided it was time to get his house in order.
He drafted his dear friend Marcia Klenbort to write his obituary and rewrote his will.
“One benefit of dying early,” he told me, “is you got this pile of money you can use to help ameliorate the wrongs of this world.”
I got the feeling talking to the 75-year-old that he had lived his entire life that way, trying to make right the wrongs of this world beginning with his decision to teach in 1967 at Atlanta University.
With a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard, he could’ve gone just about anywhere, but he decided at the height of the black power movement to come here.
“I had this feeling that I should use my talents in a place where they could be most useful,” he said.
Cummings spent 20 years at AU, teaching physical chemistry, seven heading its chemistry department, and 10 managing the university’s $16 million technical assistance contract with the USAID-funded Child Survival Project, which among other things, nearly eradicated polio in Egypt, developed the first method to measure maternal mortality, and set up 22 neonatal wards for low birthweight babies at hospitals across the U.S.
Outside the classroom and between raising their two sons, Frank and Carol signed on to work with Central American refugees, eventually opening their home to them.
“Our house became something of a little hotel in the late ’80s and through that Carol and I became associated with a small repopulation community for people who had fled El Salvador.”
They would eventually pack up their home in Candler Park and move to El Salvador, where Frank Cummings began volunteering in the schools tutoring and teaching English and math. The days turned into weeks, then years.
But in the winter of 2014, 13 years after the move, Cummings felt himself getting weaker and weaker.
In late April, after tests showed he was anemic, he flew here for a second opinion. Doctors at Emory diagnosed MDS and treated him with several rounds of chemotherapy.
A bone marrow biopsy last November showed he was on the verge of acute leukemia.
Cummings balked at the idea of undergoing more chemo. With or without it, he was going to die.
In December, he used his annual Christmas letter to friends to break the news. That letter would be his last.
Early this month, I met him at Dan and Marcia Klenbort’s home in Atlanta, where he and Carol had spent so much time.
For more than an hour, he talked about his life and his plan to die on his own terms. He just wanted to say goodbye to his friends and treasured former colleagues from Clark Atlanta University.
The hardest part about his decision to let go, he told me, was leaving his three grandchildren.
On Feb. 10, Frank Cummings returned to Eugene, Ore., to spend his last days with his sons, Mark and Andrew.
In Frank Cummings’ last moments, his grandson Ricardo Cummings sent me an email. He wanted to thank me for having shared a snapshot from his grandfather’s life.
“Things like this are very welcome in hard times,” he wrote.
Four hours later, another email arrived from Marcia Klenbort.
“Our friend Frank died this morning at about 11 Atlanta time in Eugene, Oregon,” she wrote. “His two sons were with him.”
Carol’s sister Barbara Guy read a passage from the Bible and then, one by one, Andrew Cummings said they each kissed his father’s forehead, hugged him and said one final goodbye. It was the retired professor’s 76th birthday.
“I was glad to be able to see him off,” Andrew Cummings said. “We all have come to the feeling that he has again found his beloved Carol and after 10 years of being apart they’re together again.”
Ricardo’s short note spoke more, perhaps, about the life Frank Cummings led than anything he had said or done.
In one of the last Skype calls with his grandfather, Ricardo said he told his granddad that he would “always be thinking of him like the silly, smart, and awesome grandpa that he IS.”
“It’s sad to think I won’t see him again, but I don’t feel so bad because I really feel him in my heart,” he wrote. “And I know he’s happy with grandma seeing birds, swimming, or just enjoying the moment.
“My grandpa is without a doubt, the best example that I have had in my life. I’m proud to be his grandson. I love him, and I know that he’s now watching me, and I can’t wait to make him proud.”
I get the feeling Frank Cummings already is.
