02/08/06, Sandra Martin, Michael Frastacky: Carpenter, Philanthropist 1950-2006
Post
A determined wanderer, explorer and idealist, he took an inheritance and used it to build a village school in northern Afghanistan, writes SANDRA MARTIN. He despised corruption, and that may have cost him his life.
A high-school dropout, Michael Frastacky was a wanderer and a carpenter who found his life's calling in the Nahrin Valley in northeastern Afghanistan, working with village elders to build a co-educational primary school so local children could become literate and numerate.
Mr. Frastacky had a big heart and an abhorrence of corruption and deceit. All his life, he was an idealist; he never accepted the pragmatic maxim of "going along to get along." Those qualities may have turned him into a target for local thugs, who are suspected of murdering him on Sunday night with three shots to the head. "Sometimes, Mike would make a big deal over a $5 or $10 [bribe]," said his friend, Afghan-born businessman James Kator, "and if it were me, I would let them keep the $5 and keep a low profile. But he didn't want to be the kind of person who let people take advantage of him."
Mr. Frastacky was the youngest child of Rudolf and Viera (née Orszagh) Frastacky. With their two older children, Luba and Fedor, the Frastackys had come to Canada from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1950, after spending the immediate postwar years as displaced persons. The Frastackys had expected to end up in Brazil, but a Jewish family whom Mr. Frastacky's father had helped during the war sponsored them to come to Canada.
"Michael was our Canadian brother. He was born shortly after we arrived," said Luba Frastacky, a librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Rudolf Frastacky, who had been in government before the war, got into real-estate development, eventually became one of the founders of Metro Trust and then began Frastacky Associates, a company his son Fedor still runs.
Although money was not plentiful in the early years, the Frastackys were determined to spend whatever they had on education. Luba went to Havergal College, a Toronto private school for girls, and the two boys went to De La Salle College, then a males-only private Catholic school. As a teenager, Mike was more interested in music, travelling and saving the world than sitting in a classroom preparing for a career in the family business.
He quit De La Salle when he was 16, having completed Grade 10; that caused a "period of estrangement" with his parents, according to his sister. Besides being on a different career and life path, he tended to show up on formal family occasions, such as Christmas Eve dinner, wearing jeans when all the other men were in tuxedos. After leaving school, he and three friends established a crisis intervention centre. That's how he met Arch Arthur, who became a mentor and lifelong friend. A social worker, Mr. Arthur was working for the Addiction Research Foundation, and funding crisis intervention centres was part of his job. He authorized an ARF grant of a few thousand dollars for the project. "They did a great job," he said, "because, as adults, we knew nothing about acid trips, speed trips or anything else."
After the drug-rehab project ended, Mr. Frastacky began travelling. One time, he went on a bus journey with some friends from London to Timbuktu, Mali. Then, fascinated by wooden boats, he apprenticed himself to a canoe manufacturing company in Peterborough, Ont. In his early 20s, he had a major falling out with his parents because he wanted to move to Vancouver to apprentice as a marine carpenter. One night about 2 a.m., he telephoned Mr. Arthur and poured out his woes. "I think he was hurting because he couldn't get them [his parents] to understand."
In Vancouver, Mr. Frastacky eventually "found his calling" as a finishing carpenter, said his sister. It was a skilled craft that enabled him to work for several months, then leave on long treks in countries that never make it onto the tourist hit parade. At some point, he married briefly, and adopted his wife's daughter, but the relationship did not last. As a determined wanderer, he was probably more comfortable with women as a short-term lovers and long-term friends than as wives.
Shelley Hall, now an administrative assistant at the School of Music at the University of British Columbia, met Mr. Frastacky more than 15 years ago in Vancouver when both of them were taking personal-development courses. She found him charming in a "wild and wacky" way, thoughtful and generous. "I don't think I ever heard him say 'no' if someone asked for help, nor did you ever get the sense that you were imposing," she said in an e-mail.
On one trip to Africa, he travelled across the Sahara and ended up in Madagascar, where he helped to build a school; another time, he went with a girlfriend to Yemen. In the mid-1980s, he began trekking in northern Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. During these years, he also reconciled with his father, who died in 1988, and with his mother, spending weeks at a time with her before she succumbed to a brain tumour in 1993. The death of his parents gave Mr. Frastacky a comfortable inheritance that, combined with his own income as a carpenter, he used to travel and finance good deeds in Afghanistan and other places.
Five years ago, he came up with a plan to help with an orphanage he had come across in northern Pakistan. He wanted to fix broken windows, improve the heating system, establish a sewing office so local woman could earn some money, and plant a vegetable garden. Then Mr. Frastacky learned that the orphanage was partially owned by a local warlord who had built it as a kind of reward for the widows of his fallen soldiers. Mr. Frastacky withdrew because he couldn't stomach deceit. Instead, he gave the money he was going to invest in the orphanage to another group that was working with children.
About this time, he met Maqsod, an Afghan guide, who introduced him to the Nahrin Valley, about 150 kilometres north of Kabul in northeastern Afghanistan. He came to love this area and its people, who had suffered through the Soviet occupation, the Taliban and periodic earthquakes. Maqsod was connected to the Kator family, which owned property in the area. Based in Los Angeles, the Kators were involved in business ventures in various parts of the world. Together with the Kators, Mr. Frastacky began planning and building a school, putting his carpentry business on hold while he travelled to Afghanistan for a few months every year.
There are about 10 villages in the area. Maqsod connected Mr. Frastacky with Liquat Hayat, an interpreter, and together the men visited the villages and spoke to the elders to learn what they wanted the school to be. Having developed the concept, Mr. Frastacky returned every year for a few months to realize it, working with locals on a different part of the project -- digging latrines, erecting walls, planting trees.
The school construction was largely finished, and Mr. Frastacky, who had spent about $70,000 on the project, was thinking about working on another scheme in Pakistan or another part of Afghanistan, or even adding a medical clinic to the school in Nahrin.
Afghanistan gave a deeper sense of meaning to Mr. Frastacky's life, according to Shelley Hall, and "a focus and a purpose for his energies" that hadn't been there before. "He felt that he had been blessed with the means to be helpful, and it was important for him to do so." She said "he also knew it was important that the villagers take 'ownership' of the school" and become "real partners in its development and evolution."
Toronto teacher Alison Smith, who knew Mr. Frastacky since they were both teenagers, says his desire "to return something to the country that he had come to cherish" became focused on helping "both boys and girls to become literate and have the chance to get a primary education." She had long discussions with him when he was in Toronto about book purchases and about other ways to make the school more effective for teachers and students.
His group e-mails from Afghanistan earlier this summer were increasingly pessimistic about security, including that of his own safety. He talked about buying a gun, but he never did. It is still unclear exactly what happened. Some feel that the Taliban were active in the area and that Mr. Frastacky ran afoul of their strictures against educating girls. Others think the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan turned him into a target.
James Kator believes Mr. Frastacky, who was living in a house owned by the Kator family, was the victim of a criminal gang. "Mike was the kind of person who wouldn't put up with corruption, no matter who it was, and he was in their face and I think they wanted to show him who was boss."
Three of Mr. Frastacky's closest friends in Afghanistan -- interpreter Liquat Hayat, school superintendent Noor Aga and bodyguard Nawab Khan -- have been charged with his murder, but James Kator insists that they are innocent and that local gang members are the real killers.
Yesterday, the Kator family said it was planning to rename the school Mike Frastacky's Hazrat-i-Usman School and to establish the Mike Frastacky Humanitarian Foundation, headquartered in Van Nuys, Calif., to raise money to expand the co-educational school in size, grades, students and teachers.
Michael Frastacky was born in Toronto on July 12, 1950. He died of gunshot wounds on July 23, 2006. He was 56. He is survived by his sister Luba, his brother Fedor, two nieces and many friends.
A high-school dropout, Michael Frastacky was a wanderer and a carpenter who found his life's calling in the Nahrin Valley in northeastern Afghanistan, working with village elders to build a co-educational primary school so local children could become literate and numerate.
Mr. Frastacky had a big heart and an abhorrence of corruption and deceit. All his life, he was an idealist; he never accepted the pragmatic maxim of "going along to get along." Those qualities may have turned him into a target for local thugs, who are suspected of murdering him on Sunday night with three shots to the head. "Sometimes, Mike would make a big deal over a $5 or $10 [bribe]," said his friend, Afghan-born businessman James Kator, "and if it were me, I would let them keep the $5 and keep a low profile. But he didn't want to be the kind of person who let people take advantage of him."
Mr. Frastacky was the youngest child of Rudolf and Viera (née Orszagh) Frastacky. With their two older children, Luba and Fedor, the Frastackys had come to Canada from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1950, after spending the immediate postwar years as displaced persons. The Frastackys had expected to end up in Brazil, but a Jewish family whom Mr. Frastacky's father had helped during the war sponsored them to come to Canada.
"Michael was our Canadian brother. He was born shortly after we arrived," said Luba Frastacky, a librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Rudolf Frastacky, who had been in government before the war, got into real-estate development, eventually became one of the founders of Metro Trust and then began Frastacky Associates, a company his son Fedor still runs.
Although money was not plentiful in the early years, the Frastackys were determined to spend whatever they had on education. Luba went to Havergal College, a Toronto private school for girls, and the two boys went to De La Salle College, then a males-only private Catholic school. As a teenager, Mike was more interested in music, travelling and saving the world than sitting in a classroom preparing for a career in the family business.
He quit De La Salle when he was 16, having completed Grade 10; that caused a "period of estrangement" with his parents, according to his sister. Besides being on a different career and life path, he tended to show up on formal family occasions, such as Christmas Eve dinner, wearing jeans when all the other men were in tuxedos. After leaving school, he and three friends established a crisis intervention centre. That's how he met Arch Arthur, who became a mentor and lifelong friend. A social worker, Mr. Arthur was working for the Addiction Research Foundation, and funding crisis intervention centres was part of his job. He authorized an ARF grant of a few thousand dollars for the project. "They did a great job," he said, "because, as adults, we knew nothing about acid trips, speed trips or anything else."
After the drug-rehab project ended, Mr. Frastacky began travelling. One time, he went on a bus journey with some friends from London to Timbuktu, Mali. Then, fascinated by wooden boats, he apprenticed himself to a canoe manufacturing company in Peterborough, Ont. In his early 20s, he had a major falling out with his parents because he wanted to move to Vancouver to apprentice as a marine carpenter. One night about 2 a.m., he telephoned Mr. Arthur and poured out his woes. "I think he was hurting because he couldn't get them [his parents] to understand."
In Vancouver, Mr. Frastacky eventually "found his calling" as a finishing carpenter, said his sister. It was a skilled craft that enabled him to work for several months, then leave on long treks in countries that never make it onto the tourist hit parade. At some point, he married briefly, and adopted his wife's daughter, but the relationship did not last. As a determined wanderer, he was probably more comfortable with women as a short-term lovers and long-term friends than as wives.
Shelley Hall, now an administrative assistant at the School of Music at the University of British Columbia, met Mr. Frastacky more than 15 years ago in Vancouver when both of them were taking personal-development courses. She found him charming in a "wild and wacky" way, thoughtful and generous. "I don't think I ever heard him say 'no' if someone asked for help, nor did you ever get the sense that you were imposing," she said in an e-mail.
On one trip to Africa, he travelled across the Sahara and ended up in Madagascar, where he helped to build a school; another time, he went with a girlfriend to Yemen. In the mid-1980s, he began trekking in northern Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. During these years, he also reconciled with his father, who died in 1988, and with his mother, spending weeks at a time with her before she succumbed to a brain tumour in 1993. The death of his parents gave Mr. Frastacky a comfortable inheritance that, combined with his own income as a carpenter, he used to travel and finance good deeds in Afghanistan and other places.
Five years ago, he came up with a plan to help with an orphanage he had come across in northern Pakistan. He wanted to fix broken windows, improve the heating system, establish a sewing office so local woman could earn some money, and plant a vegetable garden. Then Mr. Frastacky learned that the orphanage was partially owned by a local warlord who had built it as a kind of reward for the widows of his fallen soldiers. Mr. Frastacky withdrew because he couldn't stomach deceit. Instead, he gave the money he was going to invest in the orphanage to another group that was working with children.
About this time, he met Maqsod, an Afghan guide, who introduced him to the Nahrin Valley, about 150 kilometres north of Kabul in northeastern Afghanistan. He came to love this area and its people, who had suffered through the Soviet occupation, the Taliban and periodic earthquakes. Maqsod was connected to the Kator family, which owned property in the area. Based in Los Angeles, the Kators were involved in business ventures in various parts of the world. Together with the Kators, Mr. Frastacky began planning and building a school, putting his carpentry business on hold while he travelled to Afghanistan for a few months every year.
There are about 10 villages in the area. Maqsod connected Mr. Frastacky with Liquat Hayat, an interpreter, and together the men visited the villages and spoke to the elders to learn what they wanted the school to be. Having developed the concept, Mr. Frastacky returned every year for a few months to realize it, working with locals on a different part of the project -- digging latrines, erecting walls, planting trees.
The school construction was largely finished, and Mr. Frastacky, who had spent about $70,000 on the project, was thinking about working on another scheme in Pakistan or another part of Afghanistan, or even adding a medical clinic to the school in Nahrin.
Afghanistan gave a deeper sense of meaning to Mr. Frastacky's life, according to Shelley Hall, and "a focus and a purpose for his energies" that hadn't been there before. "He felt that he had been blessed with the means to be helpful, and it was important for him to do so." She said "he also knew it was important that the villagers take 'ownership' of the school" and become "real partners in its development and evolution."
Toronto teacher Alison Smith, who knew Mr. Frastacky since they were both teenagers, says his desire "to return something to the country that he had come to cherish" became focused on helping "both boys and girls to become literate and have the chance to get a primary education." She had long discussions with him when he was in Toronto about book purchases and about other ways to make the school more effective for teachers and students.
His group e-mails from Afghanistan earlier this summer were increasingly pessimistic about security, including that of his own safety. He talked about buying a gun, but he never did. It is still unclear exactly what happened. Some feel that the Taliban were active in the area and that Mr. Frastacky ran afoul of their strictures against educating girls. Others think the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan turned him into a target.
James Kator believes Mr. Frastacky, who was living in a house owned by the Kator family, was the victim of a criminal gang. "Mike was the kind of person who wouldn't put up with corruption, no matter who it was, and he was in their face and I think they wanted to show him who was boss."
Three of Mr. Frastacky's closest friends in Afghanistan -- interpreter Liquat Hayat, school superintendent Noor Aga and bodyguard Nawab Khan -- have been charged with his murder, but James Kator insists that they are innocent and that local gang members are the real killers.
Yesterday, the Kator family said it was planning to rename the school Mike Frastacky's Hazrat-i-Usman School and to establish the Mike Frastacky Humanitarian Foundation, headquartered in Van Nuys, Calif., to raise money to expand the co-educational school in size, grades, students and teachers.
Michael Frastacky was born in Toronto on July 12, 1950. He died of gunshot wounds on July 23, 2006. He was 56. He is survived by his sister Luba, his brother Fedor, two nieces and many friends.
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