Frankie's snowman built with love

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Michelle and Victor Clerico speak in whispers because sound hurts their son's ears and they touch him gently because pain comes with even the lightest touch.

Frankie is 5 and handsome with thick red hair and smooth pale skin and a heart as big as he is small. He tells his parents that when he dies he's going to Heaven and that God is going to give him wings. He tells his little sister: "Don't be sad. When I'm in heaven you won't be able to see me but I'll keep an eye on you."

Frankie Clerico has polysaccharidosis and glycogen storage disease, words far bigger than he is. He weighs 26 pounds. He can hardly walk and he can no longer see colors. He has throat tumors so he can barely eat.

Sunday, he lay on the couch in his Canton home, the curtains drawn, his eyes closed, his breath shallow, his hands covering his ears, his father, Victor, beside him.

The night before, Canton and Sharon firefighters along with Michelle Clerico's sister helped make his last wish come true.

"Before I die, Mama, can I see snow?" he had asked. So on Saturday, a machine blew white crystals all over the back yard as Frankie watched. Next morning his mother built him a snowman. "Anything he wants, we've done," she says.

Last summer Frankie said, "I just want to be 6 before I die," so the Clericos took the calendar, put Feb. 18 in the middle of August and and gave him a big party. "We had two clowns. He loved that."

When the Make-A-Wish Foundation asked Frankie what he wanted, he said to see Chuck Norris. So Make-A-Wish wrote to Norris' publicist, who said no.

Then God intervened, Michelle Clerico insists. A chance meeting at a party brought Jim Pacheco, 49, of Swansea, a double for Norris, into their lives.

"I was definitely not going to say no," said Pacheco, who has been visiting the Clericos since. He wears a cowboy hat and cape like Norris in "Walker: Texas Ranger."

"This is a huge deal," Mrs. Clerico said. "It's been the biggest thing in Frankie's life."

It wasn't until July 1998 that the Clericos learned Frankie has a fatal genetic disease. They were living in Arlington, Texas, and went to all the big hospitals seeking answers. A pathologist at Boston's Children Hospital made the diagnosis.

"I never went back to Texas. I called my husband and said, 'Pack up the house.'

"This has attacked all his major organs. They've taken every piece of his body and sent it out to be tested. He's begged me to never bring him back to the hospital."

Frankie was supposed to have started kindergarten last fall but because of his weakened immune system, he couldn't be around other children. "Canton is a wonderful community," his mother says, explaining how Make-A-Wish got Frankie a computer, and how the Canton school system, along with parent volunteers, set up a system so that he could see and hear his kindergarten class and they could see and hear him.

But Frankie is getting weaker and for the first time three weeks ago, he cried and asked, "Why is this happening to me?"

"There are nights we hold each other and cry because we can't stand looking at him wasting away," his mother says. "Once I walked in his room and he was standing, clinging to a chair and swaying."

"I'm dancing with God, Mama," he said.

The Clericos say that Frankie has brought God into their lives. "I don't want you to miss me," he said to his mother. "I'm gonna be an angel and I'm gonna get wings."

"For a 5-year-old to say this" says his mother, "he truly must be visited by God."