Success Story
Frank Cummings
Business Owner
Returning home from a long vacation seems a natural enough thing. It just doesn’t take most people better than a decade to get back to the nest. Frank Cummings would say he really didn’t plan to make it a 10-year trip. All he intended to do back in the summer of 1990 was help his father move from Nebraska to Cape Cod, Mass., and come back. Instead, Cummings said he liked it so much on the East Coast that he decided to stay and move in with his father. After six months, he found his own place. The St. Louis native, who now is owner of Accurate Auto Body & Glass in Norfolk, later returned to Nebraska to raise a family and “live out the rest of my days.” Cummings said he never planned to move out east.
“It just happened,” Cummings said. “I liked it out there so much I chose to stay.”
The move east wasn’t the first time he left the Cornhusker State, though. After graduating from high school in Tilden in 1985, he joined the U.S. Army. He was assigned to Fort Benning near Atlanta, Ga., where he took rifle training. Three months later, he was transferred to Friedberg, Germany, where he became a sergeant in the 136th Army Infantry. He never saw action and was honorably discharged in 1987.
“Ever since I was young, I wanted to be in the service,” Cummings said. “The chance to serve my country was a great honor.”
Before joining the military, his family moved from Missouri to Nebraska when he was 17. It wasn’t the first time they had moved, though. His father, Frank Cummings Jr., had been moving around all of his life, years before he had children. He started out as a school superintendent in his hometown of Platte River, Mo., after graduating from college in the early 1960s. Job changes prompted frequent moves over the years to communities in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska.
Cummings’ mother met her husband in Platte River, but the marriage didn’t last long. They divorced and have since both remarried. Cummings and his sister, Kelli, took part in the family’s moves, so leaving Nebraska for other places wasn’t unexpected.
Upon returning to his adopted home state from overseas in 1987, Cummings attended Northeast Community College in Norfolk to pursue a degree in auto body work. But the young auto mechanic wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life after graduating in 1989. So, when his father asked him to help him move to Cape Cod, he decided to see what New England was like.
“I didn’t know what to do with my life at the time,” Cummings said. “So I chose to see another part of the country and what it was like.”
A short trip soon turned into a 10-year stay as he built a place of his own in early 1991 and found plenty of job opportunities. He worked at three separate auto body shops in the Cape Cod area, spending about four years at each while receiving vital experience and valuable knowledge.
Cummings also met his future wife, Cheryl, in Cape Cod. They dated for a short time and married in 1993. Life was good. After a few years, though, Cummings began to miss the slow-paced lifestyle and the friendliness of the Midwest.
“The money was great and the environment was nice,” Cummings said. “But I missed the easiness of life in the Plains. The people out East are too uptight. Here, they’re friendly and willing to help in a heartbeat.”
It took a couple of years, but Cummings said he eventually convinced his wife that a move west was a good idea. They settled in Hoskins in 2003. That’s when he opened his own auto body and repair shop.
“I like owning my own business,” Cummings said. “I don’t have a boss and I get to run the show.”
Cummings said he has been happy with the slow, simpler way of life of Nebraska and thinks he will live here the rest of his life. His wife, being from the East Coast, has her doubts. But she’s convinced Nebraskans can be a wonderful bunch.
“There was a time when we lived in Stanton shortly after moving back,” Frank Cummings said. “One night it was raining hard and we weren’t home, so our neighbors opened up our basement and started bringing our stuff out so it wouldn’t get wet. When we got home, my wife was going to flip out because she thought they were stealing our things, but they were only trying to help. This would never happen in Massachusetts.”
With his 10-month-old son, Jamison, growing up fast, Cummings said he wanted him to know his Nebraska heritage, but he and the family will take the occasional visit to Cape Cod and California to expose Jamison to new and different experiences, too. But Cummings himself has planted deep roots here.
“I like it here so much, I don’t know why I left for so long,” Cummings said. “Housing is affordable, it’s a great place to raise a family and I plan to retire here. Being away from here for so long made me realize how much I missed it. I don’t ever plan on leaving again, intentionally or not. I love it here too much.”
- Story Courtesy of the Norfolk Daily News
