By Pam Hersh
At 90 years old, Frank Mazzella is a retired television repairman who hardly watches TV. He has no time because he is still working, albeit in a volunteer capacity, several hours a day at the Nassau Christian Center, 26 Nassau St. Frank is the behind-the-scenes force, responsible for the creation and maintenance of the church’s front-lawn landscaping.
Paul Harrison, a Nassau Christian Center board member, noted that passers-by say it is “the nicest lawn in Princeton, and it generates hundreds of compliments each year. Throughout this summer… we have been bombarded with questions as to the beautiful flowers in bloom on our property.”
Born at Princeton Hospital on June 13, 1926, Frank, a member of the Nassau Christian Center congregation, undoubtedly is one of the town’s longest-lived caregivers. He started caring for and giving his labor to the building that houses his Assemblies of God congregation, after he retired from the television repair job he held for 40 years.
”I offered to help with chores on the inside of the church, sweeping, dusting, polishing, trash removal, and painting. People ask me why I got started in my retirement ‘job’ and why I keep at it. What else would I do with my time? Sit and watch TV all day long?” said Frank, whose wife Betty died 23 years ago.
His biggest interior project was refurbishing and refinishing all the pews in the church. The church’s “56 pews were an ugly color — a drab tan.” He refinished all the pews and other woodwork in the church in a dark maple finish that he keeps highly polished. He says the project, which took him about three months, is the most gratifying project he has completed, except for his outside job — the gardens. Gardening is the job that never ends and is endlessly fulfilling.
Frank got started with the gardens, when it was suggested years ago that taking care of the outside property, filled with weeds and devoid of any landscaping, was hopeless. “Maybe it would have been hopeless for some, but not for me,” he said.
Frank embraced the challenge and brought about the transformation from a “depressingly unattractive and neglected” lot to a manicured garden featuring seasonal blooms and beautiful brickwork. Tulips line the walkways in the spring, mums in the fall, and impatiens in the summer. He used to plant winter pansies but had to stop because they interfered with his spring plantings strategy. Sometimes the plantings are so lush that it has the look of a magic garden. People ask what he uses to get the grass so green and flowers so vibrant and lush. His ingredient is TLC, fed to the plantings daily, along with water. Even though he claims to work “only” four to five hours in the morning, I have seen Frank at night watering the plants.
Within the next week or two, Frank will purchase and then plant 130 mums, but he worries about their color and sturdiness. He has been discouraged by the poor quality of plants obtained this year from local nurseries. “This has not been a good planting season for me personally (in his yard) — or professionally (at the church)… The church plantings are not nearly as lush as they have been in years past.
”In my yard, I planted 75 tomato plants, plus pepper plants and zucchini… the peppers died, the tomatoes are small, and the zucchini count was very low,” he said.
This plant drought is very hard for Frank to swallow, especially since he takes great pleasure in giving away his produce to family and friends, said the father of five, grandfather of eight, and great-grandfather of 10. In past years, he often would win a Princeton Recreation Department tomato-growing contest with his 18-inch-wide tomatoes. His “prize” would be a T-shirt and proclamation.
The most meaningful prize for Frank’s landscaping and gardening is “just being healthy enough to do whatever needs to be done for the church,” said Frank who is very proud of the historic church building built in 1868. The former home of Princeton’s St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the building at 26 Nassau became empty when St. Andrew’s merged with First Presbyterian and became Nassau Presbyterian Church. The Christian Center, founded in 1978, first leased then ended up purchasing the building.
And now Frank Mazzelli has planted himself into the church’s living, or one might say growing, history.
