Fundraiser set for AD who has mountains to climb

During Martin Luther King Day, Liam Frawley climbed Mount Washington with his 13-year-old son, Dylan.

Heavy wind kept them from reaching the summit but the two described the experience as amazing.

A week later, the 47-year-old Tappan Zee athletic director suffered what his wife, Janine, describes as “pretty much the worst kind of hemorrhage you can have.”

Now, Frawley fights to climb mountains much higher than Mount Washington each day and the Rockland community is joining in, hoping to make things just a bit easier for him and his family.

An aneurysm burst in his brain while Frawley was at home on Jan. 25. He spent almost two months at Westchester Medical Center before being transferred to Helen Hayes Hospital in Haverstraw for rehabilitation.

Back from surgery, back from the brink, he is better. But better is a relative term.

Physicians are still working to control the pressure in his head. He has stomach issues. He is relearning how to swallow. He still can’t speak.

“He still has to learn to do everything now,” Janine said.

But hospital staffers stand him up. Despite having little movement on one side, he also uses an exercise bicycle.

And he enjoys visitors – enjoys hearing what’s going on in the local sports world - and responds sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a nod, sometimes with a gesture.

He is “Frawley Strong.”

That’s the phrase that’s become a rallying cry.

There’s a Frawley Strong Facebook page. A Frawley Strong website is due to be up and running next week.There are plans to sell Frawley Strong bracelets, T-shirts and more.

Events are also planned around the phrase – around the man some call the “best of the best,” a man who was in the hospital when his parents, Margaret and William, accepted three education awards for him, one for being the 2016 National Federation of State High School Associations’ Educator of the Year.

June 2 is the high school’s annual blood drive. It won’t really benefit Frawley, but it’s being named after him this year because the drive has always meant a lot to him.

Besides arranging the space in the gym for it, Frawley would regularly check on workers and those giving blood. Last year, he presented those working the drive with Tappan Zee varsity letters.

“It was so neat,” South Orangetown School District public information spokesperson B.J. Greco recalled, adding, “He’s just that way.”

Greco is helping organize this year’s drive, with a whopping 1,000-donation goal.

She is also helping organize what’s now planned as a four-hour fundraiser June 12 at Casa Mia Manor House in Blauvelt.

That’s the place where Frawley, Tappan Zee’s AD since 2005, has long held the school’s sports dinners. But this will be a lunchtime buffet that will include raffles and 50/50 baskets and a lot more.

Frawley lives in New City but the response to the raffle has already extended well beyond the county’s borders.

“It’s not only Rockland. It’s Westchester, Orange County – the rest of New York,” Greco said.

“It’s because of his belief it’s all about the kids,” she said.

Byram Hills has donated a spot in its summer lacrosse camp for the fundraiser.

Theater tickets, timeshares and hotel space have been given and the effort is on to secure much more to help defray what promises to be huge, long-term bills for the family.

The response isn’t totally surprising.

“He went all out. Anything he did, he did to the highest degree,” Janine said.

That included pitching for Manhattan College. Frawley, who listens intently as his wife reads to him from the book, "Baseball as a Road to God," later became a professional baseball trainer for eight years.

But it’s his work in education that really stands out. In 2013, Coach & Athletic Director Magazine named Tappan Zee the winner of its national Interscholastic Athletic Program of Excellence award for providing the top student-athlete experience.

Frawley, who is also vice-president and chairman of professional development for the New York State Athletic Administrators Association, helped revamp the state system for accrediting coaches to make it easier to draw people to the field.

AWARD: Liam Frawley educator of the week

He speaks nationally on a broad range of sports topics, spreading, in part, an anti-bullying message.

“His coaches all adore him,” Greco said.

One is Nick Desantis, co-coach of the combined Tappan Zee-Nyack ice hockey team, which ran a successful Frawley fundraiser early this year.

"He has completely influenced my coaching and leadership style. ... I have done so much more with my athletes in regard to team-building outside of what takes place on the practice field," Desantis said, noting because of Frawley he focuses more on "character education" than wins and losses, making him a better coach and mentor.

Many people inside and outside the coaching/AD community have visited Frawley.

“A lot of people have said, ‘He helped my child’ or ‘He was so nice to me.’ He reaches out to a lot of people. … So many people he’s touched over the years now want to reach out and help him,” Janine said.

Janine mused that she and her sister say, “Liam will get through this and then write a book about it.”

Mostly, though, she said, “I just want him better.”

For her, for Dylan and for their 16-year-old daughter, Ciara.

It’s going to be a long fight, one that makes battling the wind on a more than 6,000-foot tall mountain seem like nothing.

But it will be a joint battle.

“The family is going to need help and we’re going to get it to them,” Greco promised. “We all stand Frawley Strong and we will stay with him until he walks into school on his own steam.”

Twitter: @HaggertyNancy