Frank and Eileen Ward

The Faces of Giving

FRANK WARD grew up in a triple-decker in Roxbury with his widowed mother and five siblings.  He says he never imagined the success he has enjoyed and is blessed beyond his wildest dreams Frank and is wife, Eileen, have given away millions of dollars, but he says philanthropy is not measured by amount; it's measured by attitude.

"Unfortunately I'm disappointed down here on the Cape with this crowd," Ward says.  "Some people give a thousand dollars and call themselves philanthropists.  To be a philanthropist, it's got to hurt."

A family friend spent some time at the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Cape and Islands, where Ward was impressed with the level of care.  He also was surprised to learn of the need for a pediatric center.

"You think of a rehabilitation hospital for strokes or car accidents, but you never think of it for children," Ward says.  "There is a huge need."  After meeting with RHCI's president and CEO, Frank donated $1 million to support pediatric rehabilitation.

"Carol Sim called me for a luncheon.  So I go to her office and have a chicken Caesar salad.  She puts on a tape showing this lovely, charming little girl who didn't walk in the early parts of the tape.  At the close of the tape she is walking for the first time into the arms of her mother.  The tears were starting to roll.  It was so touching.  That was the most expensive Caesar salad I ever had."

The new pediatric center is named the RHCI for Children Eileen M. Ward Rehabilitation Center in recognition of Frank's wife.

"We've had five children and my wife is a wonderful mother and loves children," Ward says.  "I thought it would be an appropriate recognition of her."

The Wards also have donated $2 million toward the drive to bring a Catholic high school to Cape Cod.  They have built a school in North Vietnam, a Byzantine church in Romania, a seminary in Havana, Cuba, and helped fund an addition to Saint George's School in Surrey, England.  Frank Ward also has donated untold hours of work for the Boston Archdiocese.

While Catholic charities are high on his list of priorities, he is very generous to other causes in faith communities as well.  He gave $1 million to the Jewish Orthodox school in Brookline, which has turned out 15 Rhodes scholars in the 15 years.

"As a Catholic, most of my experience with Jewish people is on the sidewalks of life," Ward says.  "But then I got intimate and I couldn't believe the commonality between the Orthodox Jew and the Orthodox Catholic.  And I was quite impressed with the school."

Frank Ward believes that what a person gives comes back a hundredfold.  He has many anecdotes that convince him this is true.  "The first million dollars I gave was to St. Sebastian's, and six months later my special stock was up 100 million," he says.  Ward also tells of his first plant in Oklahoma, where he handed out $100 bills to each of his 350 employees at Thanksgiving.

"As I'm passing them out, this woman who had worked with me from the beginning named Debbie, said, 'Thank you so much.  You don't know what this means.'  She said, 'This speaks God's truth to me.'"  The woman, Ward relates, said that a few days earlier, she had given her eight-year-old grandson a dollar to put in a beggar's hat and her grandson had refused.

She took her grandson over to the man and stood with him while he made the donation telling him that God says that charity comes back a hundredfold.  "She said she was bringing the money home to her grandson as proof," Ward says.  "It gave me goose bumps."

Frank Ward has helped a lot of people and, he says, there is no feeling quite like it.  "There is no house like this, no boat like that, no car is a gratifying as changing someone's life for the better.  I have had the blessing to be able to do that.  That's why I do the things I do."

He wishes more people would think about how they might also enrich the lives of others.  "You should look inside yourself and measure, Ward says.  "There's an old Irish saying, 'There's no pockets in your shroud.'"

Cape Cod Life Philanthropic Edition, December 2006, Mindy Todd