[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 13 (Thursday, February 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      TRIBUTE TO DANIEL S. FRAWLEY

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I do not do this very often, but today, I 
would like to address the Senate about a friend of mine, a neighbor 
from Wilmington, DE. Dan Frawley was not a native of Delaware; he was 
born and raised in upstate New York. But from the day he adopted the 
city of Wilmington as his home, Dan Frawley became one of its most 
devoted citizens and most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
  Dan came to Delaware in 1972, having just added an MBA from the 
Wharton School to his law degree; he was poised, it must have seemed to 
those who welcomed him, for a long, lucrative private-sector career in 
the legal division of the Du Pont Co.
  In 1973, by the luck--and it was truly Wilmington's luck--by the luck 
of a random drawing, Dan Frawley became the first urban homesteader in 
the United States. For $1, he was given a run-down house in the west-
center of a city that had been rocked by riots just 5 years before, a 
city that had been abandoned as a home by too many of its residents, 
and abandoned as a lost cause by too many of its neighbors.
  Dan Frawley lived in that same $1 house for a decade, and turned it 
into a national showplace, and the centerpiece of the renewed and 
revitalized urban neighborhood that grew around it.
  Dan never moved out of the city.
  In the difficult early years of the debate on school desegregation, 
Dan Frawley served on the Wilmington board of education. He was also 
appointed to serve on the Wilmington Design Review Commission, a 
position from which he resigned to run for--and win--a seat on the city 
council.
  Just 4 years later, in what was accurately described as an upset, and 
less accurately recalled by Dan as an overwhelming mandate, he won the 
1984 democratic primary for mayor by a little more than 200 votes, and 
went on to win the general election, and to serve as Wilmington's mayor 
until 1993. Dan Frawley had sacrificed his private-sector career for 
full-time public service, at probably half the salary.
  As mayor, Dan Frawley guided and helped stabilize the city through 
treacherous economic times. He started the Wilmington Partnership, 
raising millions of dollars in private funds to help build homes in 
poorer neighborhoods; he expanded business and jobs at the port of 
Wilmington, often traveling himself--as truly the city's best 
salesman--to promote Wilmington with potential port customers; he 
brought America's premier professional bicycle race, now the Tour Du 
Pont, to Wilmington; he led the revitalization of a long-neglected 
downtown area, known as the Christina Gateway, and he was instrumental 
in bringing a minor-league baseball team back to the city, by commiting 
his efforts--when others said he was crazy to risk it--to make sure the 
team would have a beautiful new stadium to play in.
  Those are some facts about Dan Frawley's career, and they are 
impressive and important, but the facts could never capture the essence 
of Dan's life and spirit. And it is the essence of his life that we in 
my State have been trying to give voice to since the night of 
Wednesday, February 2.
  Dan was playing basketball that night, as he often did, for a 
Wilmington recreational league team.
  With 30 seconds left in the game, he collapsed, the victim of an 
apparent heart attack. He never woke up. Daniel S. Frawley was dead at 
the age of 50. He is survived by his wife, Bonita, and their three 
children--all still at home--Marcus, Matthew, and Marjorie.
  As I have shared memories of Dan Frawley with others who knew him, it 
has been obvious that, as impressive and as important as the tangible 
accomplishments of his life were, the most defining and characteristic 
feature of anything Dan did was how he did it. At about 6 feet 4 
inches, usually well more than 200 pounds, with a bone crunching 
handshake, a broad smile, and a voice that, as they say, carried, Dan 
Frawley was a big presence wherever he went.

  He was all Irish--worked hard, played hard, thought it was better to 
sing off-key and loud than on-key and soft, fought with everything he 
had for what he believed, and competed like it counted all his life--
and not just in the rough sports of politics.
  During the tour DuPont bike race, Dan would ride on the back of one 
of the motorcycles that followed the racers, in a great big helmet, a 
bright green blazer, smiling and waving as he whipped around tight 
curves and bumped over rough roads.
  Dan was a cofounder of the Wilmington Rugby Club, and it was not 
entirely unknown for him to use an elbow--followed quickly by a smile--
while playing basketball indoors and out, probably on every court in 
Wilmington. He even competed at losing weight, entering a contest with 
some other bigger-than-average public officials in 1992. Dan won on the 
number of pounds dropped, but lost on body-weight percentage. He never 
was a percentage player; he went for home runs.
  In his private life, Dan Frawley was devoted to his family; he 
believed in family, actively cherished it, in a way that some would 
think old-fashioned, and maybe even out of character for someone who 
took such joy in being a ``public man.'' But there was no joy greater 
in Dan's life than his family--his wife, for whom he had such 
tremendous personal respect, as well as true love; his children, who, I 
am convinced, were the source of his belief that dreams could come 
true, that anything was possible.
  As much as Dan towered above most company, in stature and in manner, 
with his family, it was different; with Bonita and the children, Dan 
was a perfect fit; together, they made a complete and beautiful 
picture.
  And just as Dan Frawley's belief in family seemed so natural, he also 
had an innate belief in the importance of community. He was very 
intelligent and more sensitive than many people realized, and he felt 
an obligation toward all the children he encountered. Dan would leave a 
men's league basketball game to go watch the kids play on the other 
court--sometimes in the city's toughest neighborhoods.
  He would coach them on skills, lecture them on rules and about 
getting along with each other, and inspire them with the simple, basic 
truth that he cared about them. It was not pretense; nothing Dan 
Frawley ever did was pretense. He did not work so hard, so joyfully, 
and devote so much energy to the city of Wilmington because he thought 
it looked good.
  He did it because he cared, because he loved the city--loved it--with 
every fiber in his being, and you could not be around him for more than 
five minutes without realizing how sincere that devotion was. The same 
can be said about Dan's genuine, deep love for the people he served--
for people generally, as someone said, he even loved the people he did 
not like.
  That love Dan felt for Wilmington and its people, and the energy with 
which he expressed it, will never be duplicated and will always be 
deeply missed. The city has truly lost one of its best friends, and 
that, above all, is how Dan Frawley will be most truly remembered--not 
as one of Wilmington's accomplished former mayors, one of its greatest 
all-time salesman, or the guy who helped get the money to build the 
baseball stadium, not as a courageous public risktaker and community 
activist, or a guy who sacrificed a lot to devote himself to public 
service, or a pioneer in urban revitalization.
  Dan Frawley was all that and more, but what everything he did adds up 
to, what Dan was at the core--was a man who, like a true friend, gave 
you all he had, gave it not only willingly but enthusiastically.
  At Dan's memorial service, the most striking thing was that it was, 
truly, a gathering of friends--not colleagues or cronies, not allies or 
adversaries--but friends. A man who cares so genuinely, and who gives 
so much of his heart and spirit, inspires a very personal response. In 
the days since Dan's death, the talk in Wilmington has not been about 
his policies or programs, about his achievements or public 
contributions.
  The remembrances have been about a friend, about a man who died too 
young and yet lived a full life. In retrospect, it was as if Dan had 
known all along that time was short, and in the end, too, it seems, 
whatever stories we tell and hear about Dan Frawley, that he himself 
had chosen his own best epitaph.
  It is a quote from George Bernard Shaw, which Dan had hung in his 
office just a week before his death, and it is a very eloquent summary 
of how Dan lived, and a very fitting tribute to a friend we will long 
remember:

       ``This is the true joy of life:
       Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty 
     one; being the force of nature instead of a feverish little 
     selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the 
     world will not devote itself to making you happy.
       I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole 
     community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do 
     for it whatever I can.
       I want to be thoroughly used up when I die--for the harder 
     I work, the more I live.
       I rejoice in life for its own sake.
       Life is no brief candle to me.
       It is a sort of splendid torch which I've got ahold of for 
     the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as 
     possible before handing it on to future generations.

  Dan Frawley's torch burned bright, and burns still through his 
enduring spirit, and in the hearts on his family and of his many 
devoted, and grateful, friends.

                          ____________________