In his prime, Frank D'Amore was a force of nature. Sicilian by heritage, tenacious by temperament, a street-smart homeless kid during his Seattle teenage years, for more than 30 years a Port Townsend builder and baker, D'Amore finally succumbed to complications from diabetes, in his sleep, on Aug. 8, 2012. He was 60 years old.

Many today connect D'Amore most closely with the robust bakery he created from scratch with partner Linda Yakush that carries his name. Pane d’Amore (in Italian: bread of love) has grown from the cramped back room of the retail store on Tyler Street to a wholesale operation with more than 40 employees, most working from a large bakery at Glen Cove that exports exceptional fresh bread to a growing swath of the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas.

While D'Amore and Yakush threw their prodigious energy into renovating the century-old building and launching the bakery in 2003, health issues progressively kept him at home while Yakush took over operations and oversaw growth. She was recognized as the 2011 Business Leader of the Year for the effort. A proud D’Amore joined her at the January celebration.

Muscular force

But Port Townsend's older generation of immigrants, those who came in the 1970s and 1980s, knew a more layered Frank D'Amore. They knew a powerful, opinionated, sometimes scathing thinker who threw himself into people, into situations and into opportunities with muscular force and energy that made heads turn, things happen, and left no one unaffected.

“He was absolutely fearless,” remembered Yakush, his partner for 12 years in both life and business. “Frank used to say he had magic and that he could think of what he wanted and manifest it with his magic.”

Others agreed.

“Frank was clearly unlike any other individual in Port Townsend,” said Peter Badame, a longtime friend. “He had an interesting mix of generosity and a hard appreciation of what the rest of us took for granted. He was an incredibly hard worker. He pushed himself harder than most people to accomplish what he wanted. He would not let anything stand in his way.”

He was, Badame said, “totally authentic. He presented himself to you immediately.” This was equally true if D’Amore liked you or disliked you. He did not mince his words or opinions.

Said another friend, who wished to remain anonymous, he was “a strong bandit and poet.”

In his prime, D'Amore attacked life and attracted men and women.

"I've never met anyone like Frank," said longtime friend and cabinet-maker Mark Sabella. "He had one crazy story after another. I didn't know if he was making this stuff up. Comes to be that he wasn't exaggerating. He was telling just one in five stories that he had. Knowing him for 25 years, I don't think I heard them all."

Tenacious care

In his wake, he left many things. After he passed, some wrote poems; others set up a flower and candle-filled shrine in the windows of Pane d’Amore Artisan Bakery. He left two wives and his life and business partner, Yakush, all of them powerful women. He left a string of business, educational and social service startups that continue. They include a bakery that taught and employed the developmentally disabled, later becoming Skookum, the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, the Bread and Roses bakery (now the Courtyard Cafe) and Pane d’Amore. Katherine Baril called him a "serial entrepreneur."

Although ill, he mustered the strength, in January 2010, to generate a deep local response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The community gave $12,250 to support Doctors Without Borders. “We have to do this!” D’Amore told dozens of businesses and donors. And they did.

“His definition of community was taking care of those in need,” said Bob Podrat, who became a close friend and daily visitor during these recent years. “That was his real test of community, whether the community took care of people.”

In between, D'Amore built boats, poured concrete, built houses, built cabinets, flew kites, flew himself as a paraglider, kayaked through storms, threw huge parties, created exceptional food and baked a ton of bread.

He also left two strong, independent children. Son Gabe carries on the work of Pane d’Amore; daughter Simone lives in California and gave birth to his first grandchild just hours before D'Amore gave himself permission to depart last week.

Even in D’Amore’s final weeks and months, he tenaciously cared for those he loved. Linda was greeted each morning with his hand-made coffee; each evening with his exceptional meals. Every week, the bakery’s night crew received a homemade meal.

Intellectual curiosity

D'Amore was born in San Diego, Calif., on April 9, 1952. His father died when he was 5. His mother, an abusive alcoholic, moved to Seattle. Frank ran away when he was 15 and lived on the streets or under the streets of Seattle. Still, he graduated from Garfield High School in 1971. Sabella recalled asking him about school, expecting sarcasm. D'Amore responded: "I loved school. School was the most normal, stable thing in my life."

D'Amore's intellectual curiosity would last his entire life; his friends were amazed at the depth of his knowledge on subjects he chose to master.

An avid biker as a homeless teen, D'Amore drew the attention of an older biker who introduced D’Amore to the Little Bread Company of Seattle, an early worker-owned bakery. That's where D'Amore learned to bake.

In 1974, he married Judy D'Amore. The couple had a daughter, Lara Simone and, in 1977, son Gabriel. D'Amore studied carpentry at community college. In 1979 the family moved to Port Townsend.

D’Amore was hired as the lead baker of a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled called the Port Townsend Baking Co., which later became part of Skookum.

Peter McCracken, a Centrum program manager who worked with D’Amore and Yakush to launch Pane d’Amore, recalled watching D'Amore put his shoulder to the Fort Worden bakery.

“Frank was the force behind it," he recalled, and even then he did not suffer fools lightly. "He could meet someone and within four minutes" he's criticizing the person’s views and "has his finger in the chest. Yet they have a bond of some sort. The relationship went on."

He later worked as a boatbuilder for Mark Burn, then in home construction doing cement work for Rick Tollefson and Holly Mayshark of Tollshark Construction.

"He was a multi-talented man, and a self-made man," recalled Mayshark. "He was strongly opinionated, had incredible energy and insight. When he decided to do something he would do it." And he worked, she said, "like a maniac."

Sabella, Tollshark’s cabinet-maker, was getting behind and needed help. Tollefson sent D'Amore. They worked together for a year. Sabella noted that people were just drawn to him. "A lot of people, and especially women, were just drawn to him in an unreal way," he said. "He would be standing in a room with 200 people, and someone would walk in the door and they would look right across the room to Frank."

In 1982 Frank and Judy D’Amore launched a small bakery they called Bread and Roses, which became a popular morning stop.

The bakery was sold, but eventually came back to D’Amore due to business problems. He built up its business again and sold it again. It’s now called the Courtyard Café, downtown on Quincy Street.

During that period, intrigued by marine life, he and Judy helped start the Marine Science Center. They lobbied Olympia for sustaining state funding. D'Amore taught himself marine science and became an active and popular educator with many groups of young people.

“He is so Frank!”

After he and Judy split up, D’Amore married Ginna Cizeck. A horse owner and trainer, she purchased the property surrounding Tibbals Lake at the edge of Port Townsend. D’Amore constructed a home and helped develop the rest of the property as residences. There, D'Amore threw enormous parties in the summer and organized wintertime parties for ice skating and hockey when the lake froze over. He loved the outdoors.

He became a skilled kayaker, making lengthy trips with friends such as Dan Harpole, Jim Pearson and others. He was a superior camp cook, making great dishes from the skimpiest of foods.

Jerry Harpole, another friend, recalled what his late brother Dan said of Frank.

"When brother Dan would tell me Frank stories about how exasperating, contrary or obstinate he had been, Dan would conclude with the phrase: "'He is so Frank!'" Harpole also recalled that after D'Amore was interviewed for a job via video teleconference, he explained he did not get the job "because he couldn't use his hands while he talked."

Ginna and Frank became avid paragliders, a sport in which D'Amore excelled. He could often be seen high in the sky above the bluff between the Boat Haven and PT Paper Corp., riding the thermals. He did extensive paragliding in southern California.

After his death, a friend wrote:

"He loved the ocean and the earth, but more than those things, the sky, probably because it made him feel so free. It was the only place big enough to hold his dreams."

A paragliding accident accounted for one of D’Amore’s rumored nine lives. Badame recalled that D’Amore had soared high above Blyn in Clallam County. He had landed safely near U.S. Highway 101, ready to remove his gear, when a gust of wind picked him up and slammed him against a highway guardrail. It broke a couple vertebrae.

"His list of physical injuries was very substantial," recalled Sabella. "Every time you'd show him an injury, he'd top you. He was a pain in the ass that way. You also couldn't tell him a story. He'd top it by a wide margin."

Kneading bread

Again a single man, D’Amore became Yakush’s partner and began the final indelible chapter of his life.

He was engaged in recovery from his accident and also a construction accident that damaged his hand. That became the root of Pane d’Amore.

“I knew absolutely when we got together we were going to do something. I pictured us doing something together really hard,” she said.

Yakush recalled how she gave him a bread mixer and suggested he make bread because she was watching how he exercised his hands and it was like kneading bread.

“Six months later the bakery was open. We opened it on the spur of the moment,” Yakush said. “Now we have three locations and 44 employees. For all intents and purposes it’s a roaring success.”

McCracken, who was between jobs at Centrum, joined the pair to get the business started.

"Frank, Linda and I, we all lost weight," recalled McCracken. "We all had hard bodies. It's a physical gig." He added that they "went full bore. We were wasted." He was working there the night his new daughter Gillian was born. McCracken recalled putting his new baby in a Pane d’Amore basket with a sales sign: "Day-old, $1."

Diabetes took toll

Type 1 diabetes had made its appearance in the prime of D’Amore’s life. The body stops producing insulin with this disease.

Sabella recalled a time in Seattle where D'Amore collapsed on a residential street late one night due to low sugar levels. D'Amore instructed Sabella to knock on a nearby front door and ask for peanut butter. After the homeowner reluctantly answered the door, D'Amore kept shouting instructions from the sidewalk. It should be Skippy peanut butter, he yelled. Further, yelled D’Amore, he preferred creamy over crunchy. Sabella finally got him stabilized and got him home.

As the disease progressed and D'Amore spent more time in medical treatment, he also became an expert in diabetes and other medical issues. Sometimes he would argue with nurses and doctors.

"To hear him talk, he was the world's greatest authority on it," said Sabella. "He didn't let anyone tell him how to manage it." While he could argue, sometimes he was right and got doctors to change their course, said his friend.

In his later years, less able to work, D’Amore became an amateur astronomer, purchasing gear that let him watch and photograph the heavens.

Sabella said he was surprised to learn of this new interest, but in retrospect realized he should not have been.

“I didn’t know he was into astronomy,” he said. “One day he wanted me to look at all these websites and started talking about it. I thought, when did this happen? All his life, he said. He pointed to a huge stack of books. It was all news to me.”

D’Amore, said Sabella, “did things his own way and didn’t care if anyone else was following along behind him. He went on with his own life and just did it. He told me once he didn’t expect to live beyond 50.”

But he did, and during those still short 60 years, added friend Bob Podrat, “he lived a number of lifetimes.