The Joseph P. Niccoli Sr. Foundation Is Official
I found out the way you find out a lot of things about my father. By accident. Long after. From someone who assumed I already knew.
A few days after he passed, my wife came to me with something she’d heard. It reached her secondhand, the way these things do, through a wedding I’d shot years earlier and a couple of people I’ve never met. I didn’t believe it at first.
Before I tell you what it was, you need to know about Frank.
Frank was my dad’s best friend. The kind of friend you only get once. The one he called about everything. He’d been around so long he was just part of the furniture.
When Frank got sick during COVID, it was bad. Ventilator bad. My dad called me one afternoon, and I heard it before he said a word. “He’s gone.”
I had never heard my father cry like that. Not once in my adult life.
COVID had made the usual goodbyes impossible, so Frank’s family waited. When people could finally gather, they held a memorial. My dad showed up. And then, without a word to anyone, he paid for all of it.
That was the thing my wife had heard. That was the thing I didn’t believe. My father had covered Frank’s entire memorial and never mentioned it. Not to me. Not to my sister. Not to anyone.
I called my sister to be sure. She confirmed it. So did others who were there. They’d all assumed we knew too.
We didn’t. That was the point.
That’s who he was. Not the big gestures. The quiet ones. The ones nobody knew about until later, if they ever found out at all.
My brother, my sister, and I started the Joseph P. Niccoli, Sr. Foundation in his memory, with one intention. To find people close to home who need a hand, and show up for them. The way he always did. Without making a big deal out of it.
Our flagship event is The Annual Joe Niccoli Invitational, a charity golf tournament at Olde Scotland Links in Bridgewater, MA.
We chose April 16th. That’s the day we lost him.
We’ll see you on the course.
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Every contribution goes directly toward the foundation's work in southeastern Massachusetts.
Donate NowGiving back, the way he would have.
— Anthony, Christina, & Joey
The Joseph P. Niccoli Sr. Foundation