By all accounts, Frankie Romero has been a major part of the community on the Fenway Campus since he was hired in his teens as a part-time worker at what was then Wheelock College. He is now area manager for planning and operations on the Fenway Campus.

Campus Life

Frankie Romero Has Put His Heart into the Fenway Campus for Nearly Four Decades

Everybody’s got a story about BU’s Campus Planning & Operations area manager, who began as a part-time employee at the former Wheelock College

Franklin Romero was in high school when he started working part-time at what was then Wheelock College, now the Fenway Campus of Boston University. Mostly moving furniture at first, gradually he learned about plumbing and landscaping and all the other facilities skills needed to keep a campus running.

He became the boss while still in his 20s, and for more than two decades, he and his family lived in an apartment in the dormitory at 27 Pilgrim Road, exactly 129 steps from his office. He was always available, always eager to help when snow needed shoveling, a leak needed fixing—basically, anything.

He cared, and the campus reciprocated. Romero, known to one and all as Frankie, chokes up when he talks about it.

“We were bringing my son home from the hospital, and when we got home, my wife just started crying, like, ‘Oh my God, look at the balloons.’ The students had decorated. ‘Welcome to the new baby. Welcome to Pilgrim House. You’re a member of our family.’” It was one of many such occasions. “Those were great things,” he says.

Romero and his family “were a big part of the community,” recalls David Chard, who was president of Wheelock College from 2016 until it merged with BU in 2018, becoming BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

“For folks working and studying at Wheelock, seeing and interacting with Frankie and his wife and children made it feel very family-oriented,” says Chard, who recently stepped down as Wheelock dean and remains a professor of special education. “Being so close, Frankie was always there for every snowstorm, every theater performance, every special event, every visit from a dignitary.”

As the BU-Wheelock merger unfolded, Chard assured Romero that the campus needed him and he would keep his job. As a BU employee, Romero became area manager for the Fenway Campus in BU Campus Planning & Operations. And although the Romeros moved to Fitchburg in 2018, the buildings and grounds and function rooms—and the people—on the Fenway Campus remain central to his life. And his son is continuing the BU connection. (More on that below.)

Romero is eager to talk about it all, but first he has to take a call about a small leak in one of the Fenway Campus offices, probably from a dormitory bathroom a floor above. He calls one of his staff: “Can you get over there and check upstairs and see if you find anything obvious besides the curtain being on the outside of the shower? I’ll be over there soon.”

A decision that changed his life

Maybe his story doesn’t sound glamorous, but to Romero, it’s “the American dream.”

He was a baby when he and his mother came to the United States from Costa Rica to live with family here. He was a student at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School when he started working weekends at Wheelock, then summers too. He studied auto body and auto mechanics in high school and had a job from a Ford dealership waiting for him when he graduated.

“My boss at Wheelock, Bill Evans, called me in and said, ‘Listen, it’s your business, not mine. But I would like to talk to you about the benefits. Let’s talk to HR here. Let’s see what they can give you if, let’s say, we were to give you a full-time job.’”

Why not check it out? his guidance counselor, and his mother, advised. 

“The pay wasn’t that much better than [the dealership],” Romero says, but what convinced him to stay at Wheelock was the tuition benefit ensuring his children could attend the college of their choice. “In this country, we all know, and I know now more than ever, education is basic for everything. I bless my ex-boss here, my guidance counselor, and mostly my mother, because they guided me through the right steps.”

Always a hard worker, Romero devoted himself to learning everything he could from his older coworkers; he became Frankie in deference to a coworker named Frank. He climbed the ranks in the 1990s, eventually becoming facilities manager, in charge of the whole campus.

“They said, ‘We will give you an apartment here. You will not have to pay rent or utilities,’” he says, “but you’ll be the main man, 24/7. You’ll be in charge of everything, all the calls, plumbing, snow, everything. You have the skills now, you should be fine. At night, you’re only gonna address the emergencies. You’re not gonna be working. It’s just when a phone call comes in, you address it.’”  

Sometimes it was tough. He missed his daughter’s third birthday party after a freak rainstorm flooded one of the Wheelock buildings with four feet of sewage. But the move and the free housing meant his wife, Adabel, could stay home and be a full-time mom, and their three kids could play all the sports and enjoy all the afterschool activities he’d missed as a child.

They also got an add-on family on the two floors of dormitory rooms above them. Adabel cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for any student who had to stay over the holiday. The students hosted his kids for trick-or-treating and left them presents at Christmas.

Referring to his youngest child: “Anthony, well, we had to put a lock on the door because once in a while he disappeared,” Romero says, chuckling. “He’s upstairs in one of the rooms, laying on the bed, all the girls are giving him candy and they’re watching TV.”

Neither snow nor rain…

“Has anybody told you about his snow-blowing?” asks Kevin Kareckas (Wheelock’12).

“Picture a 15 degree night, and you go outside and you’re walking on the Riverway between Longwood House and Peabody Hall, and there’s Frankie wearing shorts and a T-shirt! Bigger than life, taking up the sidewalk with his big machine or just shoveling, making sure everyone was safe.”

Kareckas, who earned a bachelor of science degree in elementary education from Wheelock, teaches fifth and sixth grade in a public school in Shelburne, Vt. As a resident assistant and student government official, he had a lot of contact with Romero and his crew, to get a door unlocked or set up a room for a meeting. 

“Frankie was a personality that I would reflect back on and try to emulate quite a bit,” Kareckas says, “because you could just see the heart that he shared with all of the students that he supported.”

As undergrads, Kareckas and a friend had a hobby rehabbing abandoned bicycles, and he was carrying a particularly derelict specimen across the campus one night when he ran into Romero. “He was like, what’s going on? I told him I have to get this chain cut because it had rusted completely in the cassettes. And he was not on call, he was not working. But he stopped what he was doing to help me out with this project. That’s the kind of guy Frankie is. And he addressed me by name too, just as an undergrad. 

“I was an elementary education major, and the idea of knowing all of your students and participating in community was modeled by Frankie,” Kareckas says. “He helped me become the person I am today and [shaped] how I show up at work and in my community.”

A popular guy

Everyone you ask about Romero has a similar story to share, including those who made the transition from Wheelock to BU.

“We just held our grad student orientation at 43 Hawes Street,” says Ellen Faszewski, now BU Wheelock associate dean, student affairs, and a clinical professor. “There was a change in the setup that we wanted to make. And the event was starting in an hour, if that. And he was like, ‘No problem. I’ll get my team here.’ Whatever it is that you need, he is there. He’s awesome.”

No surprise that his home in Fitchburg is well maintained, too. “Frankie and I are both obsessed with our lawns. I have a picture of his lawn,” says Faszewski. “It looks like the infield at Fenway Park.”

“I met Frankie when he was a very young and shy guy,” says Eleonora Villegas-Reimers, a clinical professor and chair of BU Wheelock’s teaching and learning department. “I remember his transition from one of the new, young people to one of the people we all looked up to and called when we needed help.”

They connected more when they began speaking Spanish with each other. 

“During All-College meetings, when we were given a topic to discuss at the tables,” Villegas-Reimers says, “he told me that ‘some of the guys,’ meaning the Facilities staff, did not speak English enough to participate, so they were not coming to the meeting because they were a bit embarrassed. I told him I would be happy to sit with them and have the conversation in Spanish. So, that became our tradition.

“When we founded La Herencia Latina student club at Wheelock he would always come to my office to tell me the menu for the meeting that month, as many times it was his wife who would make the traditional food for the students,” she says. “He, his wife, and their kids were always part of the meeting, invited by the students. Frankie and his family were truly part of the Wheelock family, and that was especially true for the Latino students. 

“Just the image of him at 16 years old mowing the lawn at Wheelock, and here he is 40 years later, still loving the place,” says Maryellen Madaio, BU Wheelock associate director of events and alumni engagement. “I just think he’s a lovely man, isn’t he?”

Cue the spooky music

Romero has even seen the spectre said to haunt the Wightman Mansion, a college property at 43 Hawes Street in Brookline, now used mainly for conferences and events. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he says, “but something happened.”

The mansion was under renovation when one night the private security guard at the site called Romero to Hawes Street. “He’s like, ‘Somebody’s inside, they’re after the tools or something. So I get there and Brookline Police is right behind me. When we get to the front gate, I look up to the third floor, there’s no windows, just openings, and I see this gentleman walk across. I couldn’t see his face because it’s dark, and he has a hoodie. But I see him walk across looking at us.

“I say to the police officer, ‘He’s on the third floor.’ He’s like, ‘OK, let’s let loose the police dog.’ The dog flies up there, but he finds nothing. And we search from the basement to the attic, and we don’t find anybody in the building. We don’t find anybody in the building. The security guy says to me, ‘You saw him, right?’” 

Other staffers have encountered strange phenomena at Hawes Street. The next time someone calls in a ghost sighting, though, Frankie may not be the only Romero on scene.

Daughter Jessica, his oldest, is a teacher and currently a full-time mother; Anthony, the youngest, works with autistic children. And after some college and a stint working for his father, middle child Franklin Romero, Jr., is a student officer at the Municipal Police Training Committee’s Lynnfield Police Academy. In February he graduates and begins his probationary period as a member of the Boston University Police Department, protecting the campus that his father helps keep running.

“My wife says it’s weird how life works,” says Romero Sr. “He always knew he wanted criminal justice, and now the world comes back and gives you that second chance.”

The proud father looks a little choked up again.