I had the good fortune to live my whole life not even a mile from my mother, Frances Chartuk, and was able to see her almost every day until she passed away a few years back at age 86. She was well-loved in the community and spent much of her time helping others, good deeds that came back to her many times over in her happy life.
School shopping at the old Sweezey’s Department Store in Patchogue when l was a youngster, l wanted to get her attention and called out, “Mom.” Of course, every lady in the store turned around, so l changed tactics and yelled, “Fran,” and I have called her that ever since.
Fran had many hobbies and belonged to various community organizations, including the Friends of the Library in Center Moriches where we lived, the Salvation Army, which honored her for 50 years of volunteer service, and a long-time Moriches Bay Historical Society member. Many people know her for running the society’s thrift sale for 25 years, which raised about a thousand dollars a week to fund the restoration of the Haven’s House Museum. When the Sunrise Fires tore through the community, she was on the front lines serving the firefighters as they battled the flames.
Fran was an avid collector and was into Phoenix Bird china, Roseville pottery, and antique bottles, which we would dig up at old sites around the area. Recently, l picked up a copy of a local paper that runs a column about what happened in the community 50 years ago. It was late, and l was going to read it another time. But something compelled me to open it, and in the column, l was delighted to see Frances Chartuk mentioned for displaying her bottle collection at the library. Fran was into the many fads and had plenty of Pogs, Beanie Babies, Mutant Ninja Turtles, McDonald’s glasses, and whatever else was en vogue. My brother’s kids called her “Grandma Marbles and would love to visit her toy museum.
I was lucky to have my parents living close by, and our favorite thing to do was play Pinochle. We had some pretty lucky hands over the years, but nothing compared to the epic draw Fran pulled one evening. Beating odds that were probably millions to one, Fran had a double run with every diamond in the deck and even paired one of the Jacks with a Queen of Spades to make a Pinochle. This was akin to getting two Royal Flushes in a row in five-card stud poker and then some.
Always on the hunt for something or another, Fran was a charter member of the Long Island Treasure Hunters Club and located many items with her metal detector, including several class rings, which she researched and returned to their owners. She was in all the papers for reuniting a man with his Center Moriches High School ring that had gone missing for almost 40 years. Another time, a pilot flew in from California to retrieve a college ring he had lost at Cupsogue Beach 30 years earlier. A colonial-era copper pot she found in Setauket is on display at the Terry-Ketchum Inn museum a few doors down from where she lived.
At a yard sale one day, Fran bought a small red vase for a dollar that turned out to be made by Tiffany’s. She sent it to an auction house specializing in Tiffany, and it appeared on the front cover of their catalog. She made $5,000, which went to help pay for my sister’s wedding.
Fran was also an avid Scrabble player and read the newspapers from cover to cover every morning, including the sports pages as a Mets fan. She would do the crossword, Cryptoquote, and Jumble and went through plenty of word search books. She was sharp right to the end and always knew what was going on in the neighborhood and the world.
Fran liked jazz and country music and once sat down at a friend’s drum set. Having never played before in her life, she amazed us by rolling across the skins and making the symbols sing like she was an old pro. She even kept the rhythm going with both feet on the floor drums. She always had the stereo on in the car, and l still enjoy listening to Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, and the Blue Grass music she used to play.
When her eyesight started to fail in her 80s, she switched to a Kindle to continue reading her crime novels and biographies. She would do her puzzles with a magnifying glass.
Fran was pretty much a homebody for most of her life, and then, in her 80s, she got a boyfriend and they hit the road, traveling to the places she had read about all her years. She threw tea in Boston Harbor and stayed overnight at the home of Lizzie Borden, infamous for giving her mother 40 whacks (when she saw what she had done, gave her father 41). She went to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater estate, Gettysburg, Hershey Gardens and Butterfly Atrium, Frick Historic Home and Gardens, Dollywood, Dupont’s Winterthur Gardens, FDR’s homestead at Hyde Park, Nashville, Grand Ole Opry, Graceland, Biltmore Estate, Newport Mansions and Topiary Gardens, Appomattox Court House, Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Mystic Seaport, Sagamore Hill, Al Capone’s prison cell at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum, Fishing Hall of Fame, Titanic Museum, and the D'Elia Antique Tool Museum in Scotland, Ct., as well as stopping in to see my sister in Delaware and my brother in Virginia.
Fran was a sun worshipper, and because of her, we found our love for the water. I’ve been surfing for 50 years now and have her to thank for bringing me to the ocean to enjoy one of the best parts of living here on Long Island.