To be perfectly Frank
Remembering
Frank Henagan

It's been almost a decade since Trinity College lost Frank Henagan, a figure that looms so large and is so deeply entwined with the experiences of decades' worth of alumni that it can still surprise some when mention of his name is met with blank expressions by current students with the quizzical reply, 'Who's Frank?'

So ... who is Frank? 

In many ways, it's a good question. Frank Patrick Henagan was born in Adelaide on 28 November 1933. 'Exactly where he was born is lost in the sands of time', his later biographer Dawn Leicester (TC 1979) mused, 'but what is known is that he lived in an orphanage until 1938.' 

In that year, he was adopted by an elderly couple, the Henagans, and moved to Melbourne to grow up in a home in Albion Street, Brunswick East.

His adopted father Frank Henagan Senior had worked in quarries as a 'powder monkey', setting the explosive charges for blasting; until something went wrong and one detonated prematurely. It left Frank Senior blind and for the remainder of his life he made his living busking in Bourke Street Mall and selling matches. He died in 1942, and his wife Maud followed three years later. 

The couples' adult daughter Myrtle – Frank's adopted sister, then in her early 30s – continued to raise him.

As he grew into his teens, Frank said he 'kind of worked a few things out myself', coming to the realisation that his 'sister' was in fact his mother; that the couple he'd known as his parents were actually his grandparents.

Devout Irish Catholics, the Henagans had managed to shield their daughter from social disgrace for having an illegitimate child, all the while providing a loving home for her son and their grandchild. 

Frank attended Moreland Primary School in Coburg before going to Parade College in East Melbourne to complete his matriculation. He was then accepted into RMIT to study engineering.

It was a great opportunity, but not where Frank's heart lay.

A gifted middle-distance runner and footballer, Frank's held ambitions of becoming a physical education teacher but he was dissuaded by his teachers who were concerned about his speech impediment. It would be a lasting regret for Frank, eased in some measure by his later involvement with sports at Trinity. 

Frank completed two years at RMIT, working at night at Radio Corporation to help support himself. He was actively involved in athletics and competed in country gift meetings throughout the state. It was a busy schedule and Frank would later attribute subsequent events to him doing too much. 

Perhaps it was compounded with the revelation of his parents, but the weight of things all became too much for him to carry and he suffered a nervous breakdown.  

To aid his recovery, the advice was to get away from Melbourne, to find new outlooks and horizons.

In the early 1950s, Frank moved to Mildura with his girlfriend Margaret and picked up whatever work came his way. In the sun-basked corner of northern-western Victoria, there was always fruit to pick and football to be played with the Mildura Imperials Football Club.

Even in Mildura, hardship followed Frank however. Margaret developed leukemia, for which there was limited treatment in the 1950s. The couple returned to Melbourne where she succumbed to the disease. 

The rural experience of Mildura no doubt helped Frank decide that an outdoor life was the best fit for him. After qualifying with the Royal Victorian Bowls Association as a green keeper in the 1960s, Frank worked for periods at the Kew and Fitzroy Bowling clubs before joining the staff of Port Melbourne Council around 1966. His time at Port Melbourne straddled attending to the city's gardens alongside a role as trainer for the Port Melbourne Football Club. 

Football, being his passion, became Frank's first attention. Trinity hadn't won a match in two years and it would still be a further three years before they did. Indeed, successes would remain limited. Despite some strong teams throughout the 1980s the illusive grand prize was always seemingly just out of reach.

That changed heading in to the 1990s, when Trinity made the grand final for four consecutive years and winning the premiership in 1994 with a team that would include alumnus, and later CEO of the AFL, Gil McLachlan. But even Gil was forced to admit at Frank's 80^th birthday in late 2013, a single premiership across 30 years was not the best of coaching records. 

But in many ways, more than his presence on the sporting field, it was Frank's friendship with students and staff alike that endeared him to generations of Trinity.

All three Wardens sought out and valued his wise counsel and many a student valued his worldly advice, or a lunch across the road at Cafe Royale.

'Frank had a wonderful way of increasing my confidence when I doubted myself,' later Senior Student Pip Duffy (TC 2004) recalls, 'and yet quietly letting me know when an alternative path or decision was necessary.'

Frank was a quiet achiever who never sought the limelight but simply got on with doing those things that he saw needed doing. Well in to his senior years, he would be seen moving furniture around the college for events 'and a thousand other thankless odd jobs', Chris Watkins (TC 1997) remembers.

Senior Student Michael Traill (TC 1979) described Frank in this way: 

Having lived within the residential student community for years in lower Bishops', shortly after turning 80, Frank's health took a turn, and he was admitted to hospital over the 2013 summer break. He passed away on 6 January 2014.

The day after his funeral, staff came into college and were surprised to find the furniture not set for formal Hall; it was one of the tasks that Frank had simply set about quietly doing that had gone largely accepted for years. 

As Taffy Jones (TC 1957), remembered him in the weeks after his passing: