Frank Lettera has engaged in philanthropy from early in life. At the age of 9, as part of an initiative of McDonald’s restaurant, he held a carnival in his backyard in Flatbush to raise money for muscular dystrophy. The event grew over time to become a block party to fight this disease.
He continues to be active philanthropically today. Frank is a former long-time member of the advisory board of the American Cancer Society Staten Island and co-chaired its golf outing. “I’m not a great golfer,” he said, “but I have chaired a lot of golf outings for charity.” For the Theodore A. Atlas Foundation, he hosted five or six golf outings, raising close to $300,000. “We did pretty well.”
What makes a good golf outing? “Great weather, a lot of giveaways, and terrific food.”
Frank has likewise held fundraisers benefiting other organizations such as Chrissy & Friends, Inc., a non-profit that he co-founded with a friend that fights epilepsy. For Addeo Hospice Residence on Staten Island, a hospice for palliative care, he co-founded the Joe Gentile Memorial Golf Outing, named for a friend’s father.
At many of these golf afternoons, the players pause along the course to enjoy food and drink on their way to completing the golf course. For example, meatballs might be served at the fifth hole, sausage and pepper heroes at the seventh, clams on a half-shell at the ninth. There are drink stations set up along the course, too. There a handful of ways that successful golf outings can hit a hole-in-one in raising money: golfers each pay to participate, there are raffle items, as well as both a silent auction and a live auction. Local venues have included La Tourette Golf Course in Snake Hills, Staten Island, or the South Shore Country Club which is in Huguenot.
In raising donations to United Cerebral Palsy, Frank led the building of Teri’s House, a handicap accessible home for a woman named Terry with four children with Downs syndrome. Likewise, by working with an organization called Michael’s Cause and the Staten Island Contractors Association, he spearheaded an addition on the Michael Capolongo House, which gave it an elevator, making it handicap accessible.
He has also chaired a golf outing and a cocktail party for the Staten Island Zoo that had night-time torches and a jazz band. He spotted cockatiels and even an anteater.
His fundraising prowess has received numerous accolades, such as the Paul Harris Award, given by the Rotary Club, rarely bestowed upon a non-Rotarian such as Frank. He has been also honored by a number of organizations including the American Cancer Society, Center for Hope Hospice, the Eger Foundation, Michael’s Cause, the Epilepsy Foundation and others. He was named “King of Staten Island,” by the Star Network, a marketing group.
Notable celebrities at these events have featured leading boxers. They include the former two-weight world champion Michael Moorer, heavy weight fighter Gerry Cooney, known for his left hook, and George Michael “Micky” Ward, often known by the nickname “Irish” Micky Ward.
“Since I was a kid, I have enjoyed helping other people,” said Frank. “Thank God for what I have.”
He has been managing director of Hanley Funeral Home for 28 years. He said the key to success in that occupation is “Be honest and the family will sense that, and when they sense that, they’ll trust you.”
Frank grew up close to family in Red Hook and moved to Flatbush. Both of his grandmothers lived nearby in attached buildings in Red Hook and an aunt resided at a house on the corner in Flatbush. His father was a longshoreman, who walked to work in the cold or heat. His mother ran a candy store in Red Hook, where she put the young Frank to sleep in a bedroom in the back.
Frank finished eight years of Catholic School at Holy Innocent in Flatbush. Then he attended La Salle Academy. The school, located in Manhattan’s East Village, was run by Christian Brothers, an order of the Catholic Church. He next headed to Midwood High School in Brooklyn, where he liked to work in the woodshop. Around 1979, he worked for a year or so on the commodities exchange on the sixth floor of the World Trade Center. When an order for cocoa, gold and silver would come out of a machine, he as a clerk would take it and run it over to a broker.
Frank has long had a passion for theater. In his late 20s and early 30s, he played the Prince in Cinderella with the Westfield Community Players. Other roles included Tito Morelli in Lend me a Tenor, and Big Jule in Guys and Dolls, and Tyler in Prelude to a Kiss. Around 2001, he performed in The Fantasticks in New Jersey at the Cranford Dramatic Club. “I enjoy acting. it’s very relaxing.”
In 2000 Frank took a course in comedy at the New York Institute for Comedy in Manhattan. The course has each student perform in two venues. His pair of performances took place at Don’t Tell Mama as well as at Caroline’s on Broadway on a Sunday afternoon. In the early 2000s, he was a three-time joke contest winner at the Italian Club of Staten Island in the late 1990s. He mused, “You have to have a sense of humor if you’re the youngest of five children. It’s the only way to get attention.”
His son, Christophe,r is pursuing a career in film production in Los Angeles. He directed and acted in a film at Quinnipiac College called Blue Lines, about a boy hockey player who avenges the murder of his father.
Frank first learned about The Lambs when he was a bartender in 1993 in Charlie Brown’s Fresh Grill on North Avenue in Scotch Plains, N.J. There he met his sponsor Jack Smith, and later met his co-sponsor Maralyn Dolan-Goldstein and Dr. Alan Goldstein. Lambs member Lisa DeFelice, who is a television advertising research executive, and Robert DeFelice are neighbors of Frank in Scotch Plains.
A real highpoint was meeting famed Lambs member Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie in The Honeymooners. Frank said, “Meeting Joyce was amazing.” As he recalled, “My family lived in a railroad apartment in which both parents watched TV in the living room and slept there. When I was about six and they were viewing the show, I would watch The Honeymooners from the other room through my bed posts.”
–written by Gary Shapiro