Frank Busch’s life was defined by coaching, caring and giving back | Greg Hansen

What?

“I'm headed to Idaho for some fishing and am passing through your old stomping grounds,” Busch wrote. “Hope you're having a good summer.”

How did Frank Busch know where my hometown was?

But then I never told him my oldest son, Ben, was in the hospital in 2011. Yet one afternoon, while I was sitting on a chair next to Ben, Frank walked through the hospital door.

“I heard about your son,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

It took me back to an afternoon at the Hillenbrand Aquatic Center in 1993 when Arizona silver medalist swimmer Crissy Perham was talking about Busch being named the NCAA Coach of the Year (for the first of six times).

“Frank has a penchant for doing the right thing,” Perham said. “He's the consummate good guy.”

Thirty years later, Busch showed up at a Denver hospital to see what he could do to help Crissy. She had donated a kidney to the father of four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Missy Franklin, and had spent the previous week staying at the Buschs’ home at the Tucson Country Club.

“Frank was by my side from the beginning,” she said. “He's visited me wherever I lived — New Mexico, Texas, all over. He's the best.”

Last Sunday, Frank was on the way to Tucson from visiting the USA Swimming headquarters in Denver when he had a heart attack at Sky Harbor Airport and died. He was 75.

“He had arrhythmia and had an appointment with his heart doctor Monday in Tucson,” his wife Patty said. “It's just so sad.”

Busch's most honored swimmer, nine-time NCAA champion and Olympic gold medalist Ryk Neethling, was rocked by the news of his coach's passing.

“I'm bursting into tears when I think of his voice,” he told me.

Whitney Myers Burnett, an NCAA champion and the first of three Arizona NCAA Women of the Year — yes, three!— coached by Busch, wrote, “Every accomplishment or accolade I've received since I was 18 should have an asterisk that says ‘Thanks to Frank Busch.’ ”

Arizona's 1990s NCAA champion Seth Pepper called him “Father Frank.”

Annie Grevers, a multi All-American honoree and runner-up for NCAA Woman of the Year in 2011, wrote, “He's one of the rare people who somehow had time for all of us. He gave and gave and gave and gave.”

During the 2012 London Olympics, I was sitting in the Star newsroom when my phone rang. It was Frank, then director of the USA Olympic swimming teams. He was poolside minutes after Tucson's Caitlin Leverenz won a bronze medal.

“I've got Caitlin Leverenz here if you want to interview her,” he said. He then handed the phone to Leverenz.

Frank's story is worthy of a movie. After coaching the Cincinnati Bearcats swimming teams through the 1980s, he applied for the vacant UA coaching job in 1989. He was one of more than 75 applicants.

He heard nothing from the UA for six weeks, so he finally called assistant athletic director Mary Roby and asked if she received his resume. 

“She told me I was one of 12 under consideration,” Busch told me. “One of them was the defending NCAA champion coach, Nort Thornton of Cal. I didn't think I had a chance.”

A few weeks later, Busch flew to Tucson and interviewed with Roby and AD Cedric Dempsey. Roby had a special instinct when it came to hiring coaches. She hired UA softball coach Mike Candrea from Central Arizona College. Busch would go on to rival Candrea as one of the four coaches on the UA's Mount Rushmore of coaches, along with baseball's Jerry Kindall and basketball's Lute Olson.

But what made hiring Busch so special was that he was about to step away from coaching when he finally got Roby's “the-job-is-yours” call.

“I was going to get out of coaching in 1989,” he told me in 2008 after winning NCAA championships in men's and women's swimming, a feat that had been accomplished just once in history. 

“Patty and I had five young kids and I just couldn't make it on what I was earning at Cincinnati. I had become a minority partner with a man who was going to build condos and apartments.”

Over the next 22 years, he turned down opportunities to be the head coach at Florida and USC. I asked him if it resulted in a higher salary at Arizona.

“No,” he said. “I didn't think leveraging my job against those was honest.”

Frank's last job was as corporate and community liaison for the Jim Click Automotive team. He raised and distributed funds for Tucson charities. He was perfect for the job. Giving, thinking of others first. What a special man.

A memorial service for Frank Busch will be held at noon on Oct. 17 at St. Pius X Catholic Church. A reception in his honor will follow at the Tucson Country Club.