From adversity, Frank flourished

Frank Costa was a Geelong success story. But, at his state memorial service this week, his little brother Robert explained it was the tough times that made the man.

YOU’VE all seen pictures of Frank hoisting aloft the 2007 premiership cup. Some of you have perhaps even seen Frank ringing the bell of the Stock Exchange six years ago.

These are very public exhibitions of success under Frank’s leadership.

But today I’ll talk about a failure.

In the dying days of the 1960s our second brother Adrian decided to buy out the major opposition in Geelong — Watson & Co.

That was a huge stretch financially. Overnight the business more than doubled in turnover and people.

And it started off like a firecracker. There were trucks everywhere, people and produce going everywhere. It was the talk of the town.

But it wasn’t too long before the cracks started to appear.

We were really struggling.

I had just left school at that time, so I was probably 18-20 years old, and we were really struggling to manage this business.

We were drowning in debt, bleeding cash badly, we had angry creditors. It was a real mess.

So, we look back and say “We really got that wrong. It was a bad mistake”.

Then right in the middle of this Adrian and his wife Mary were killed in a tragic road accident.

So the whole business was spiralling downwards badly.

Shortly after that the bank (manager) needed to call Frank in.

And he told him, he said: “You’ve got two choices: you can either sell this business very quickly; or, you have to shut it down. It is impossible for you to keep trading.”

He then said to Frank “you boys have just bitten off far more than you can chew”.

Frank came back to relay that to us, and we asked Frank “What are we going to do?”

Frank’s answer was very swift and emphatic.

He looked us in the eye and he said “we’re going to chew like buggery”.

And he did. Frank led the charge.

I remember he got all of Dad’s titles off him for his properties, and we borrowed against those to give money to the bank to get them off our back.

We had growers who offered to defer any payments for over a year.

Frank sat down with the major creditors and negotiated extended terms.

We even had a couple of friends who brought in brown paper bags, gave these to Frank and said “use these for as long as you like”.

There was absolutely no documentation of any of this. It was all done on Frank’s handshake. And therein lies the backstory of Frank’s leadership.

Did he do it all alone? No, of course not.

But the strength of his character and his indomitable will galvanised everybody around him.

The team — the one he put together in that crisis — they would have walked through the Valley of Death for Frank.

Yet throughout all of these travails, Frank never lost his compassion.

Those of you who met Frank will know this. He was invariably late for an appointment, he would never be on time, frustratingly. I’d ask him “Where the heck have you been?” and it would always be because somebody needed an ear, somebody needed a shoulder, somebody needed a hand-up. And Frank never refused anyone.

You’ve all heard him described as a philanthropist, and yes he was.

But I say it in the pure sense of the word.

In modern-day usage the word philanthropy has been somewhat mangled, and is understood to mean a lot of rich people writing cheques. But the actual root meaning of the word philanthropy is “a love of humanity”. And it’s defined as the giving of time, energy and self to your fellow man.

And, in that, I say my brother Frank was the quintessential philanthropist.

DID HE DO IT ALL ALONE? NO, OF COURSE NOT. BUT THE STRENGTH OF HIS CHARACTER AND HIS INDOMITABLE WILL GALVANISED EVERYBODY AROUND HIM.”