The late Francis “Frank” Bice, a Manhasset native, coach, teacher, author, foundation head, and Catholic deacon, was honored over the weekend by his alma mater, Siena College, after fellow alumni, friends and family donated over $50,000 to a fund in his name.
Bice, who died in January at age 60, was a student at the school on Oct. 4, 1980, when he was injured in a football game against St. John Fisher College, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Undeterred, he graduated from Siena in 1982 and went on to teach theology and coach sports at institutions like the coeducational Canterbury School in Connecticut, where he attended high school, and the all-girls Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, while receiving master’s degrees from the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington and Yale Divinity School. At the time he died he was living in South Bend, Indiana, and working as a tour guide in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame.
As part of a project to honor Bice, Siena College organized the lighting of all the candles in its grotto on Sunday, whose date marked the feast of St. Francis in the Roman Catholic Church and the 40th anniversary of Bice’s injury.
The project also funded a memorial bench in Bice’s name at the grotto and an endowed scholarship in his name at Siena College in the amount of $25,000, which the school says will be given “in perpetuity.”
“Thank you to this true Siena Saint for setting an example of faith for us all to follow,” the college said in a statement.
