Andy Franz died on December 27 in the home that he built and loved in Titusville, NJ.
Andy was born on March 3, 1935, in Batchka, Palanka, Austria-Hungary to Josef and Katharina Franz. In 1944, his family and their ethnic-German neighbors were displaced at gunpoint from their homes. He spent the next four years as an enslaved child in the work camp Jarek, where he, unlike others, survived hunger and typhoid. In 1948, he and his parents escaped by foot to Austria, entering freedom in Hungary on Good Friday, and began their lives as Displaced People. He attended school until age 15, when he apprenticed as a Tischler — a cabinet maker — supporting his family in Graz, Austria, and building cabinets across the country. In 1956, he immigrated through Ellis Island on a Liberty Ship with $12, a cardboard suitcase, and a sponsor in Trenton, where he, along with other Danauschawben refugees, started his life as an American.
In 1958, Andy and his friend Adam Martini found work as master craftsmen at Nakashima Studios in New Hope, PA, where he learned the aesthetic that would shape his life. With the help of his friends, he went on to build a home outside Pennington, NJ. In 1969, after an accident on the day of the Moon Landing, he left Nakashima and accepted a job at Princeton Day School as an Industrial Arts teacher, where he remained for 29 years. He also served as an advisor and liked to say that he “lived in many houses” thanks to the skills and work of former students. He retired from PDS in 1998 and found a second home in Hope Town, Abaco, Bahamas. Only a year later he boarded one of the first planes to arrive after Hurricane Floyd, taking a chainsaw and his toolbox to help others recover and rebuild. He also salvaged and restored the “shack” he named “Wrecktory,” and spent 20 winters with a community and friends in the “most beautiful place in the world.”
In recent years, Andy found continued joy and purpose building and creating objects from wood (and the occasional conch shell) in his home workshop. Surrounded by wildlife, he fed the birds each day and nurtured the many relationships he had forged throughout his life.
Andy is predeceased by his son Christopher (daughters Veronica and Bridget of Ewing, NJ). He is survived by his daughter Susan Franz Murphy (of Lumberville, PA, children Cassidy, Robert, Anna, and Jacob), his son Robert (of Tampa, FL, wife Mia, and sons Owen and Gareth), and remembered by many friends and former students.
While Andy loved flowers, gifts to Doctors without Borders (donate.doctorswithoutborders.org) or the Hope Town Volunteer Fire and Rescue Foundation (donorbox.org/hope-town-volunteer-fire-and-rescue-hurricane-dorian-relief) are welcome.