Frankie Grizzaffi:
CLASS OF 1970
Waltrip High SchoolClass of 1970
Houston, TX
Frankie's Story
to see how i looked in school check me out on pg.307, 1969 aries in the middle section DE students. i had a hell of a lot more hair then, than now and it was alot blacker. some where i still have my black glasses. STORY: i was born in st. joseph hospital in houston. lived in 5th ward on nance st. as a baby above my dads beer joint later we moved to "podunk" (denver harbor) where we lived till i was 16. i attended resurrection catholic school 1-8; furr jr&sr ; st.pius ; waltrip till graduation in 1970. we moved to lazybrook when i was 16. i worked for fedmart & j. weingartens while in school. i started working when i was 16. my first car was a 1960 chevrolet impala which i drove to waltrip. i also took others to school with me my brother vincent, lynda pintsch, kay miles, raul guzman, linda & larry carson, donald theriot etc... my favorite place to eat was jack in the box (ella), colmans pizza & de pauls italian restaurant on shepard. i started dating debbie de mottier at waltrip in 69 (which was the year i was supposed to grad.) and we got married on april 15, 1972. our first place was an apartment at 1855 wirt rd. and then we bought our first home at 1402 cheshire in oak forest next door to debbie's folks at 1406 cheshire (where her mother still lives). i went to work for the city of houston in 1973 in the traffic signal division. in 1974 i started the houston fire department training academy and graduated. in 1979 i went to the UTMB to become a paramedic which i really enjoyed doing for 6 years. worked for HFD till i retired in january of 2004. my last job with the HFD was that i was in charge of the accident review board which i had for 5 years. i had a very nice retirement party at JAX's grill on shepherd dr. i was given quite a few very nice gifts even the fire chief was there. during my time in the HFD i had numerous extra jobs like most firefighters do with all their time off: wilsons printing & stationary, j.weingartens, bramco ambulance, hou-tex ambulance (6 years), home remodeling with other firefighters, bayou city lawn service (6 years my own business). in 1987 i was hurt in a fire truck accident which took me out of the station and put me into a staff position in the southeast quadrant of houston. for 8 years i taught firefighters refresher courses on the fire simulator and also in april we would have air boat training before hurricane season and i was also a certified TPWD boating instructor. in 1991 we started looking for property out of town to move to and we found 3 acres w/ pond in chappell hill which we bought and moved to in 1992 after selling our home in oak forest. we started camping when wendy (1976)was 3 years old & hilary (1979)was 6 months old. our favorite place to be is in galveston at the state park. we camped for years then bought a lot at jamacia beach built a house on it and watched it be blown away by hurricane alicia. we only had the house 27 days. after our insurance settled with us we rebuilt the house a whole lot stronger than the first house but sold it a few years later. it made it through ike pretty well. my br...Expand for more
other vincent is an architech and designed our home in chappell hill. we lived in our friends 30 ft. camping trailor and our 24 ft. camping trailor for 9 months while our new home was being built in front of the campers. the girls were planning to make our camper their home while the house was being built (9 months), but the very first night the coyotes started howling right by the campers and from that night on they moved back into the larger trailor. after about a week i moved into our trailor so everyone could have more space. the coyotes did sound very loud in a popup trailor and during the winter ice formed over my bunk on the extremely cold nights. some how we survived this experience. the girls both graduated from brenham high school and started working neither one was interested in going to college like their folks. both daughters are married and hilary has given us 3 grandkids: zoey 9 her twin brothers are cameron & cooper 3. the girls also live in the brenham area. my kids have never seen me in real life with clean shaven upper lip. i have cheated death twice since i retired i had a stroke in 6/2004 and was in therapy till the end of october 2004. several months prior to that i was having weakness and i thought it had to do with a pryor back injury, come to find out it was TIA's (mini-strokes). debbie had always told me that i was a stroke waiting to happen, i guess she was right! high BP,type II diabetic, over weight. i broke my first bones at 56 yrs. old because i rolled my tractor over on top of me broke 5 ribs, left clavicle and sturnum. i had to get my self out from under the tractor and walk down a hill and back up the hill to my house. i thought i had my cell phone in my upper pocket but did not, i had a bunch of keys instead. no one was around it would of done no good to yell for help. it took me about 45 minutes to get out from under the tractor and get home. the whole time i was laying on the ground under my tractor it continued to run, but the blades did shut off on there own when i came out of the seat. i had more life threating things happen to me as a firefighter but never any broken bones. i could write a book about all of my experiences as a houston firefighter / paramedic at the time but it would probally just bore anyone reading it. unless they like excitement such as being at someones front door asking any one if they called an ambulance and have a butcher knife come through the screne door missing my face by inches and then out came the deranged woman high on something still going at me with the knife. OR delivering a breach birth baby to a mentally ill young woman who did not realize that she was pregnant, an did not understand any thing i told her to do, delivering the baby safely to jeff davis hospital and having the doctors congradulating me because they had never even delivered a baby naturaly. OR going to a shooting off of navigation at a little bar and finding a man on the ground shot in the head with his brains cooking on the hot asphault road. many more stories to go for another time if we should ever meet.
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