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An Electric City original still burns brightly
Frank J. Duci may lack official standing, but he'll always be a mayor
By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer
First published in print: Thursday, November 20, 2008
SCHENECTADY — Reports of Frank J. Duci's demise have been greatly exaggerated.
It's going to take more than a diagnosis of lung cancer and three months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments to silence the four-term populist mayor and 87-year-old gadfly, who refuses to let his passion for politics and the Electric City dim.
He's lived for the past 78 years in the same two-family house on Avenue A off Van Vranken Avenue in the Goose Hill neighborhood. He remains the ultimate booster for a version of the city that hasn't existed for many decades, except in the mind of a dyed-in-the-wool Goose Hiller like Duci.
Duci continues to host a weekly local cable-access TV program, "Frankly Speaking," as he has since the mid-1970s, holding forth on how the city should be run, even though he hasn't held elective office in a decade.
"That's just Frank being Frank," said former mayor Albert P. Jurczynski, a fellow Republican who clashed often with Duci. "He could really 1120_a2furniture frustrate me to no end when I was in office, but he's the kind of guy you can't stay mad at."
Stooped by age, with his white hair sprouting back after chemo, Duci churns along on gimpy legs with an unrepentant optimism or perhaps sheer obstinacy — Walter Mitty meets Mister Magoo.
Who else has powder-blue socks poking out between gray polyester slacks and black loafers as he slides into a gold Chrysler Sebring convertible? Or tosses off phrases like "For cryin' out loud" and "Ain't that the nuts" as if they'd just been coined?
None other than Frank J. Duci, the man, the myth, the legend.
"Frank's as much a fixture in Schenectady as the GE monogram turning green and red every Christmas season," said Mayor Brian Stratton, a Democrat whom Duci continues to bury in handwritten memos that tee off on Stratton's policies.
Lest we forget, it was Duci who proposed City Council members buy state Lottery tickets and turn over any winnings to the cash-strapped municipality (he still thinks it's a great idea).
He had a plaque installed on the house in the Stockade where he was born.
He kept a realistic-looking hand grenade on his City Hall desk, with a sign that read, "Complaint Department. Take a Number" and the number was attached to the grenade's pull ring and pin.
Nowadays, even his own Grand Old Party routinely dismisses him as a has-been, Democratic leaders roundly laugh off his suggestions and he long ago accepted his fate as the butt of political jokes.
And yet, Frank Joseph Duci, a character as colorful and central to Schenectady's identity as Lawrence the Indian or Thomas Edison, can still draw a crowd of fans like nobody's business at noontime in the Erie Boulevard Burger King....................http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=741757&TextPage=2
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