Like many who visit Leelanau for the first time, Maple City resident Frank Mancuso first discovered and came to love the county as a child, when he and his family would come up to visit his aunt and uncle in Empire on summer vacation.
Raised in Hollis, New Hampshire, making the annual trip to Michigan, specifically Leelanau County, was always one that Mancuso looked forward to. Sunsets on Empire Beach were the best he’s ever seen, Mancuso said, and he learned from his uncle how to fish on South Bar Lake in Empire.
“Coming here (to Leelanau) was almost like going to Disney World,” Mancuso recalled. “We were the token ‘fudgies’ cruising around with New Hampshire plates on our car in the summer. I don’t get too mad about traffic jams now because once upon a time, I was one of those people.”
Mancuso has been living and working in the area now for the last 24 years, give or take. His journey to relocating to the region meant rewriting his path several times, but in the process, he found a family, career, and a place to call home.
In 2000, Mancuso said his parents retired and decided to relocate to Empire to be closer to family, meanwhile, Mancuso was in the middle of college at the time attending St. Bonaventure University in New York. When he graduated with a journalism degree in 2003, he moved to Virginia to work in radio for about a year as a producer and DJ.
The experience led him to venture into getting a job as a wedding DJ with “Mr. Music” in Traverse City, where he worked with longtime northern Michigan radio host Norm Jones. Since the DJ job lasted only for a summer, Mancuso later took on a different gig at Quicken Loans downstate in metro Detroit. It was during this time that he’d made another big decision to go back to college to study Language Arts Education.
“I wanted more of a career than just doing different jobs,” he said. “I needed to figure out what I wanted to do, so I decided I should become a high school English teacher.”
While attending Bowling Green University, Mancuso would return to Leelanau and Grand Traverse County in the summer, where he worked in security at Munson Medical Center. The job market when he graduated at the time was not great for teachers, he explained, so he stayed to work at the hospital full-time when he finished his studies and graduated from Bowling Green.
“They were treating me well, then the hospital worked with me and found me a job that would fit my skills a little bit more,” he said.
For the last 12 years, Mancuso has been working as a safety technician in facilities administration at Munson hospital. While not directly tied to journalism and language arts, he said he’s able to still plug in his skill set from his education into his security and safety job today.
“This was a good position where I was doing safety education and compliance and policies… My predecessor was getting ready to retire, so I looked at it like ‘there’s going to be a lot to learn there, but I think I can really apply my skills.’ I really am thankful that this position kind of found me,” he said. “We’re definitely an organization that cares about our patients first of course, but also anyone that walks in the door, as well as our employees, and that’s what’s kept me here as long as I have.”
And while Mancuso found a career working at Munson, it’s also where he met his wife, Kayla, who was working as a nursing assistant at the time. They got engaged in December of 2019, just before the COVID pandemic swept through the country.
“We were both working in healthcare and it was challenging. The pandemic hit and we were trying to put together wedding plans during a pandemic,” he said. “We were the first postpandemic wedding (August of 2021) at the Hagerty Center since it (the pandemic) started. There was a lull in pandemic activity, so we got really lucky… I think everybody was in such a good mood — all of our guests that came — because it was the first time a lot of them were really able to go out and do anything really social for the last couple years.”
Mancuso and Kayla had their home built on the Shimek family property in Maple City after they got married, where he and his wife, two step-daughters, Tyla and Laila, now live along with their dog, Chip. Family members from Kayla’s family are neighbors just down the road, with Mancuso’s family not far away in Empire.
In the winter and springtime, the couple keeps busy running the girls around for sports practice, but Mancuso himself has also made a point to stay involved in sports in the winter, serving as a high school wrestling referee for the past nine years.
“I spend a lot of time in gyms during the wintertime. I’m either watching the girls play basketball or I’m refereeing wrestling, so that’s how I pass the winter, it’s fun,” he said. “When Kayla and I do have extra time, whether it’s a little road trip or taking our dog for a walk or going to the beach — that’s kind of our down and relaxing time. There’s a lot we like to do around the county when we do have those free moments.”
While his 20s had him moving from place to place, he has now settled down in Leelanau, a county he’s always loved, but never could have imagined he’d be living in as a permanent resident.
“This has really become my home, my whole life is here now and I’m happy… The reputation of New England versus the friendly Midwest, it’s completely true,” he said. “I never pictured myself having a permanent home and family here, but here I am. It’s all worked out, life’s been great, and I’ve been very blessed to find my way to where I am.”
