The Joseph P. Niccoli Sr. Foundation Is Official
I found out the way you find out a lot of things about my father — after the fact, from someone else, completely by accident.
A few days after he passed, my wife came to me with something she'd heard. Years earlier, I had shot a wedding for Frank's niece. That bride's sister had told a friend that my dad had paid for Frank's entire memorial dinner. Quietly. Without telling anyone. That friend told my wife. That's how it got back to me.
I didn't believe it at first. I asked my sister. She confirmed it. Others at the memorial knew. Everyone had just assumed we knew, too.
We didn't. That was the point.
Frank was my dad's best friend. The kind of friend you only get once — the person he called about everything, the one who'd been in his life 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 could hear it before he said a word. "He's gone."
I had never heard my father cry like that. Not once in my adult life.
When Frank's family held a memorial gathering — Covid had made the usual rituals impossible, so this came later, when people could finally be together — my dad showed up. And then he quietly paid for all of it. Didn't mention it. Didn't tell us. Just did it and went home.
That's who he was. That's the thing we kept coming back to after we lost him — not the big gestures, but the quiet ones. The ones nobody knew about until later, if ever.
The Joseph P. Niccoli, Sr. Foundation, Inc. was incorporated in March 2026. Anthony, Christina, and Joey Niccoli started it in memory of their father, 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 — The Annual Joe Niccoli Invitational, a charity golf tournament at Olde Scotland Links in Bridgewater, MA — is planned for Spring 2027. Sponsorship opportunities open next month.
We'll share more here as things develop.
Giving back, the way he would have.
— Anthony, Christina, & Joey
The Joseph P. Niccoli Sr. Foundation