‘He lived to help others’

Frank Kriz never wore a halo or wings, but talk to the many people he helped during his life and you would swear the man was a real-life angel.

For those who were fortunate enough to call him friend, he was always there to lend a hand, whether it was helping fix a wiring issue in someone’s house or organizing a group camping trip.

“He lived for other people, for helping other people,” says close friend Brian Turner.

“He was a very special guy that way. There’s no one like him that I know. Everyone has a little piece of him, in a sense, with how he fixed something for them or helped them out with something. That was his legacy.”

Frank Kriz, who died last year, is pictured here with his sister Bohuslava. (Supplied)

Even though he had a full-time job as an electrical technician with Manitoba Hydro, Kriz served at Jocelyn House as the hospice’s volunteer caretaker. He visited the facility on a daily basis where he did everything from rolling out its garbage and recycling bins to the curb and filling bird feeders to conducting weekly checks of its chairlift system and shovelling sidewalks for staff and visitors.

“Since he’s been gone, we have started to realize he was kind of like our little angel. If there was a power outage in the neighbourhood, within minutes, you knew Frank was going to be at the back door asking if we had everything we needed,” Jackie Bouvier, the hospice’s manager of volunteers, says of Kriz, whom the non-profit honoured at its annual Sunday Supper fundraiser in May.

“Originally, I kind of thought we were special. But when I went to his memorial, over and over again, people got up and talked about how Frank helped them the same way he helped us. It’s just who he was. He was just a kind, generous man.”

Read more about Frank Kriz in our weekly A Life’s Story feature.

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How They Lived

Read about the lives of great Winnipeggers and Manitobans on our Passages website.

Until next week, may you continue to write your own life’s story.

Sunday Passages