It”™s before 8 o”™clock on a recent school morning and Frank Squeo has beat the fleet of yellow buses dropping off students and creating parking lot gridlock on the Rockland BOCES campus in West Nyack. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt with “Memory Maker” printed on the back, he flips on lights and dashes about the culinary arts kitchen in a wing of the red brick BOCES school with missionary purpose and perhaps more anxiety than usual in this holiday season.
“We have to make 20,000 cookies today,” he tells a young woman who arrives in faded sweatshirt and jeans with a couple friends. Danielle Squeo is a junior marketing major at James Madison University in Virginia. Busy, earnest Uncle Frank recruited her to aid him in his charitable cause on her winter holiday break.
“It”™s falling on your shoulders because I”™m leaving at 11,” he informs his niece as he sets large stainless steel mixing bowls on a counter. A mess hall-sized mixing machine nearby churns chocolate chips and flour into a taffy-like state in a nearly overflowing vat. Squeo is in a rush to deliver a memorable gift this afternoon to a family near Philadelphia.
As a small business owner, it”™s the long offseason for Squeo, who for 35 years has run from his Valley Cottage home a one-man pool services company, Personalized Pool Care. He serves customers in Rockland County and New Jersey”™s Bergen County. Over the winter holidays, the pool man for years has baked chocolate chip cookies for his customers.
They love them, he says. “It”™s a special recipe that we use. Every year I make these holiday cookies. I”™ve been doing it since I was a kid.”
Squeo was 47 when, while hiking in Arizona about eight years ago, he noticed a lump in his neck. Needle biopsies were inconclusive and the lump remained an unsettling mystery. In 2007, a few months after discovering it, he had the entire lump removed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Doctors found advanced Stage 3 testicular cancer.
“The lump in my neck was the last stage before it went into my brain.”
Three months of difficult chemotherapy followed, and the first treatment temporarily left him blind. Chemotherapy was followed by another six months of recovery. Frank Squeo was one of the fortunate to emerge from that medical and emotional trial.
“It”™s totally healed,” he says amid the noise and brisk movements of an institutional kitchen where 20 to 30 BOCES students and staff and Squeo-directed volunteers measured, mixed, ladled and baked batches of chocolate chip cookies. “I”™m totally healed.”
The grateful cancer patient felt “there had to be a reason for why I went through this.” He thought about children with cancer and how much more devastating the disease is in their young lives and for their families. Squeo for many years has sponsored 13 children in impoverished countries with donations to international organizations. He thought to do more good for children closer to home.
“I”™m a Disney freak,” he said, the kind that makes regular pilgrimages in the course of a year to Disney World in Florida. That passion and a talent for baking critically well-received cookies combined to inspire the nonprofit foundation the pool man launched in March after two years of planning and paperwork.
Baking Memories 4 Kids, his foundation is called. At the organization”™s website, bakingmemories4kids.com, donors can order a one-pound box of Squeo”™s made-in-Rockland cookies for $24.99. Jack Daniels Motors in Bergen County has ordered 500 containers. Order four boxes or more and shipping is free.
With proceeds from the holiday bake sale, Baking Memories 4 Kids sends children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses and family members to Florida and gives them a week of free passes to Disney World and several other amusement parks and attractions. (For every order, $1 is donated by Baking 4 Memories to the St. Jude Children”™s Research Hospital.) The Florida gift package includes round-trip airfare, a rented car and resort accommodations.
“It”™s a $15,000 vacation that we”™re giving free,” says the founder. Later today he”™ll drive to the Philly area to present that gift to a family with two children afflicted with a genetic condition, spinal muscular atrophy.
“We had enough raised to send eight families this year,” he says. “We want to sell more cookies and send more families.” Though the foundation accepts monetary donations on its website, Squeo says as “an old-fashioned type of foundation” it relies largely on its cookie sales to fund the Florida trips.
In this first season of formal operation, “We have about 1,800 orders so far. If we don”™t sell cookies, we can”™t send families.”
Squeo found the BOCES kitchen facility in West Nyack online. Before moving operations during a brief baking season that started last month, he had already baked 10,000 cookies in his Valley Cottage home.
On the Saturday before this school day baking session, 40 student volunteers pitched in to help in the 10-oven BOCES kitchen. The weekend labor produced 56,000 cookies for the cause.
“Can you do me a favor?” Squeo asks Kendell Brenner, the chef who instructs the BOCES culinary arts class. “Can you find some salt? Somebody took my salt and I need it right now.”
For his culinary students baking for the charity, “We tie it into the curriculum for production baking,” Brenner tells us. “It teaches them job-ready skills.”
“Hey, Kendell, this oven is not running!” Squeo is shouting now as he runs between workstations.
“We figured we”™re doing 3,000 cookies an hour,” says Brenner. “It”™s organized chaos. It”™s all about the collaboration and building the partnerships.”
“OK, guys, are you working with me?” Squeo addresses the kitchen crew. “I need you right now. ”¦Today we really got to go fast. Get these cookies on the trays. We got to get them in the oven.”
“Whoever”™s rolling them, stop,” he says, surveying cookie dough gobs spooned onto oven-bound trays. “Just put them on the trays. They don”™t need to look good.”
The pool man expects to turn out about 200,000 chocolate chip cookies in his busy off-season. That could add up to some good memories for some very sick kids.
Frank Squeo is my nephew and I am so proud of him. A great guy with a heart of gold.
it is unbelivalble what my son can do. He never seems to surprise me at what he can acompliance.He is one special person.
I am so proud of you and all that you accomplish in your life. You never cease to amaze me how determined you are when you want to do something.