A word from Nancy Tichy:
On January fourth, near four a.m., Frank’s heart gave a mighty surge. Shortly afterwards, it stopped. Soon, his breathing ceased, and then only a faint pulse was discernible. Eventually, that, too, was gone, and we knew that he had entered into His Savior’s presence.
It was a painful vigil for the three of us then at his bedside. An hour or so earlier, many of Frank’s closest family, including some of the young children, had gathered around him in his hospital room and sung hymns of praise and quoted Scripture. He had been taken off life support and was unconscious, with only an oxygen mask to assist his labored breathing. No medical hope remained.
Frank leaves an enormous “hole” in the heart of our family and will be sorely missed by us all. There is much we cannot understand. We do know that the love and prayers of a host of people all around the world uphold us. We will wait for answers to our questions as God deems it best to give them.
Meanwhile, the settling process in our new home is moving forward. Frank fell in love with this place almost as soon as he first stepped over the threshold a few months ago. He never entered it after we moved because of the crisis that took him to his third and final hospital incident. It was, as it were, his last gift to me – my earthly “safe place.”
Cancer is the underlying cause of death – assisted by heart complications and pneumonia. The nursing care at Menifee Community Medical Center, just four miles from our home, was superb. His doctors described their treatment as “aggressive.” We did all we could to help Frank remain with us for a few more months, short of a miracle of healing. God withheld the healing and, instead, took him to Himself where he could hear the Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of heaven and all eternity.”
As I tried to sleep in the family lobby the first night Frank was admitted to ICU from the telemetry floor. I noticed a sign over one of the doors that read, “NOT AN EXIT.” I realized then that Frank’s death would not be so much an exit as a glorious ENTRANCE through which we will all at some time pass. So often, during our fifty years together, he went ahead of me. Usually, I could follow and most of the time we walked side by side. No woman has ever had a more loving, supportive husband. Underlying all he did, even with his human frailties, his goal remained to please God and love and serve people.
My grief is understandably deep. My calling and ministry is not over as his was. I ask God for the measure of strength needed to continue on without a life partner, knowing that I am deeply, deeply loved by our children and grandchildren -- and an incredible number of supportive friends.
Many of you read the “health bulletins” during our battle with cancer, and turned them to prayer. Thank you for your faithfulness. I value your continued prayer support as I seek God for His strength to walk on by His grace knowing that I am not really alone. Psalm 131:1,2 reads in part: I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me -- to put my hope in the Lord both now and forever more.
Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:
Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart . . .
Try to love the questions themselves.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
Live along some distant day into the answers.
Many of Frank’s dear friends came to his service, some from great distances. Pastors from Hemet and San Jacinto and the greater Riverside area blessed us with their presence. Please know how much he valued the prayer times on Thursday mornings in both locations. Scores of former students and colleagues in mission around the world are sending responses by email. Our large family stands together in their love for their dad, grandfather, brother, uncle and close friend. You all bless me tremendously with your love and support. Thank you, Nancy January 10, 2006
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Frank Charles Tichy, Jr. was born February 20, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois, just 20 minutes ahead of his twin, Betty Jane Tichy (Thompson). They remained the only two children of parents, Frank and Hazel, who raised their twins in the greater Chicago area. Their childhood was a happy one in spite of the depression, primarily because theirs was a large extended family with many aunts, uncles and cousins. When he was six, Frank came forward at the end of a revival service and received Jesus as his Savior. Later, the family’s home church, Midwest Bible Church of Chicago, became a spiritual haven and place of growth. Music played an important role in Frank’s life. As a young child, he began his violin studies. In his teens and young twenties he frequently played this instrument to bless others, often with his sister accompanying him on the piano.
In 1950, Frank graduated from Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois, with a BS in Biology still hoping to go on to medical school. Instead, he attended the U. of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and received his Masters in Zoology and a teaching credential. It was on this campus that Frank accepted leadership roles in Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship and enjoyed ministry to international students. A year at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, CA preceded 18 months on staff with Inter Varsity as Missions Staff traveling to campuses all along the East Coast and as far north as Duluth, Minnesota.
It was here that he met Nancy Schroeder in February 1954, shortly after his 25th birthday. After months of intermittent correspondence and visits, he proposed to Nancy in June 1955 and they were married December 23, 1955, in Duluth, a little more than fifty years ago.
Frank’s desire to serve God in Africa began in his youth, and before he proposed to Nancy he first asked her if she were willing to go to Africa. The couple pursued several options in the early months of their marriage and eventually went to Monrovia, Liberia in June 1957 where Frank began his eight-year career at the University of Liberia, teaching zoology.
Soon after beginning these duties, Frank met with the president of the university who called him to his office and asked him to form a campus “religious” group for students. Thus began the Varsity Christian Fellowship, part of Inter Varsity, International, a group that had a sustained ministry long after the Tichy’s had moved on. During this time the couple participated in ministry at the missionary radio station, ELWA, and helped in the formation of the first Christian camping program in Liberia, CAMP LAWANA, named after the well known AWANA program that Frank was part of as he grew up in Chicago.
In the summer of 1966, after a year raising donor support in the States, Frank returned to Liberia, West Africa with his wife and children who numbered three by this time: Betty Marie, Ellen, and Valerie. For four years, Frank served with Scripture Union as an itinerant pastor and youth worker visiting over 60 high school campuses in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In December 1966, on their eleventh wedding anniversary, Frank heard over the radio the news of the birth of his son Jon as he was eagerly trying to get home to the family at ELWA. During the last 18 months of this period, he moved his family to Freetown, Sierra Leone, making it possible for Frank to spend less time away from his wife and children.
In the summer of 1970, the Tichy’s returned to Chicago for a year and then on to Hemet, California for another four. During this time, Frank and Nancy both served on the staff of the Hemet United Methodist Church. In the summer of 1976, Frank was asked to help a group of families begin a church, first known as the Grapefruit Grove Fellowship. He was the first preaching elder of what is now Bible Fellowship Church.
In the summer of 1976, answering an inquiry from Monrovia, Liberia, Frank and Nancy, together applied to teach at the American Cooperative School, (ACS) an International School with an American curriculum. Leaving behind their two eldest daughters to attend college, the Tichy’s flew into Monrovia to begin a nine-year commitment to students from 30 different nations who passed through their science and English classes. Frank continued to mentor Liberian Christian leaders at this time to continue on with the work of Scripture Union.
In the fall of 1985, Frank and Nancy joined their family of four adult children, now in Hemet, and his aging mother, Hazel. He was a popular substitute teacher in the Hemet/San Jacinto school districts and followed a number of opportunities to support his family. During this period he served for 18 months with Global Opportunities, a resource ministry in Pasadena to Christians who seek secular employment overseas as a platform for outreach and ministry. Soon after, the Tichy’s volunteered to work part time with the US Center for World Mission (Pasadena) representing this agency for missions mobilizing in the Inland Empire. Their commitment grew until they became full time representatives and, following the Lord’s clear leading, established a Center for World Mission – Inland Empire with a large resource library in Riverside.
The commitment to serve as an Associate Pastor at the then Bible Fellowship of Riverside (now Bridges Christian Fellowship) led the Tichy’s to purchase a home in Riverside ten years ago. After leaving the pastoral staff of BFOR, Frank served for nearly three years as a hospice chaplain. This ministry suited him well and allowed him to use his gift of compassionate shepherding. Patients’ families were appreciative and in a few instances, he was able to lead dying men and women into a relationship with Jesus before they were ushered into eternity.
For the past three years, Frank worked full time developing the Center for World Mission in Riverside with a leadership team and the support of several churches in the area. He was also active on the Board of God’s Kids. He developed a growing love for and relationship with pastors in the Inland Empire and rarely missed an opportunity for prayer times in Riverside and occasionally in Hemet-San Jacinto. He was an able communicator and loved teaching lessons in the Perspectives missions course or simply sharing wisdom from the Word of God.
Frank was an avid gardener who specialized in growing African violets. He deeply loved music of many kinds. His range of knowledge was wide and he followed issues of science and ethics until the end. He considered himself a “Barnabas” and enjoyed networking, often bringing people together for their mutual benefit. He loved to travel and helped lead a team of four men to spend a month in Ghana and Liberia in February 2005. He made many short-term mission trips into Mongolia as he avidly followed and participated in the exciting development of church growth there over the past decade.
Frank could easily express his love for his children who held first place, along with his wife, in his affections. The Tichy’s “adopted” African young people and their large homes in Liberia and Sierra Leone usually housed one or two of them at any time. He had plenty of room in his heart, also, for many other young adults so that he leaves a very large family on earth to mourn and miss him.
In April 2005, the first symptoms appeared of what was finally diagnosed as mesothelioma, cancer in the lining of Frank’s right lung. Upon the recommendation of three oncologists, he chose chemotherapy and completed two sessions of a four-session treatment. Freed by this from the pain that had become increasingly severe, he encountered other more challenging side effects resulting in three hospital stays and progressive weakness. On the evening of the day the Tichy’s were moved into their present home in Homeland, he manifested alarming weakness, with heart distress and was rushed by paramedics to the hospital where he died 18 days later of pneumonia. All four children, 13 grandchildren, his twin and other close family members had gathered over the holidays to celebrate the Tichy’s Golden Wedding Anniversary and so were present, many of them singing hymns around his bed, hours before he slipped away to Heaven.
Frank took the Word of God seriously and prayer was an integral part of his life. Goethe once wrote, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” This is true of Frank’s love for God and for people. We cannot count the numbers who have been shaped in some way by Frank’s love for them. We bid him a reluctant farewell and wait for the Grand Reunion, not only with our beloved husband, father, sibling, grandfather, and friend, but also with our Savior, Jesus.
Revelation 7:9 states, “ . . . there was a great multitude, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They cried out, ‘Salvation belongs to our God Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.’” This vision was a large part of Frank’s passion on earth. This is our present, certain hope – to stand with Frank as part of this great throng and rejoice in all God’s gifts through his life with us here.
Nancy Tichy
30810 Paradise Palm Ave.; Homeland, CA 92548;
Home phone: 951-926-9011
