As she plans the memorial service for her husband, the extraordinary skater everybody knew as “Shooter” at the once-mega-popular Skateland in Salisbury, his widow wants to represent everything he held dear.

“I’m going to have his ashes there and an 8-by-10 picture of us together. I had his floor guard shirt from Skateland framed and it will be there. I’m going to have his skates and a mower,” Jeanette Frisby said, because her husband, Ervin Frisby, “loved a well-groomed yard.”

Final arrangements hadn’t yet been completed at mid-week, she said, her voice breaking with emotion as she explained that in March last year, Frisby, known for his kindness and generosity, and esteemed for skating excellence, suffered a sudden stroke. He died on Feb. 4, two days after his 71st birthday. His memorial service will be held at Mitchell’s Martial Arts, located where Skateland used to be, and where he later worked and, of course, skated.

“He will have his last skate. Someone will carry his ashes and skate around the room,” said R.S. Mitchell, Senior Instructor at Mitchell’s Martial Arts.

“He was one of the best employees we ever had,” Melody Mitchell, owner of Mitchell’s Martial Arts, added.

“He was our maintenance manager. He drove buses for us. Anything you asked, he would figure out a way to fix it or he would take care of it. When he cleaned for us, the place was immaculate. He would skate around the room, mopping,” R.S. Mitchell said.

Not long after Skateland closed in 2004, Mitchell’s Martial Arts opened in the same South Division Street location and offered private parties and skating at after-school programs and during summer camp. Frisby was there, on skates and again teaching children and teenagers.

On Facebook, Mitchell’s posted, “Mr. Shooter endured a long fight and like he always did, he gave 1,000 percent. As we are all trying to process this loss, we are also trying to help make arrangements for his memorial service. His wife has let us know, and we agree, that his love for skating here where he worked for so many years is where he would have liked his memorial to take place.”

Having his memorial at Mitchell’s is “what he would have wanted,” his wife of 43 years said, adding they met about 50 years ago.

“He saw me through high school and he bought all my clothes. We grew up together in Fruitland. There was a little store down the road from my house. We all used to get together. We would all go down there playing the jukebox and dancing. We met like that. His brother liked me but I said, ‘I don’t want your brother. I want you,’” she recalled, calling him “a wonderful man like no other man who ever lived.”

“No man would add up to him. If I got to be here the rest of my life I’ll be here by myself because I know I won’t be by myself. He will always have my back,” she said, recalling the night before he had the stroke.

“He loved turkey necks. He just loved them. Even if he went to the store just for a bottle of soda, he would check and see if they had turkey necks. That night, before he had the stroke, I made turkey necks for him. He finished eating. He got up, cleaned himself up and we went to bed. He got out of bed around mid-morning and he fell on the floor. He had high blood pressure  but he took his medicine faithfully. I called the ambulance and we got him to the hospital and they told me he had a stroke. The first test said it was a minor stroke. I guess he had been there about a month, then they upped it to a major stroke,” Mrs. Frisby said.

He never regained the ability to walk or speak clearly, but he understood everything going on around him, she said.

Called “Shooter” because of his love for BB guns and other types of firearms, Frisby was renowned for gliding forward or backward while dancing on skates, raising his arms high as the beat of a popular song filled the air and colored lights bathed the smooth floor.

“We used to stand at the rail and watch him and I would say, ‘Now, how did he do that?’ I skated just enough to look cute,” his wife said with a laugh.

“He taught me to backward skate, but it wasn’t easy. The whole time he would push me backward and I was the whole time hollering. He said, ‘You have to cut this hollering out.’ I broke my wrist. I fell over top of a girl and I broke my wrist. But him, he never broke a bone. He never hurt himself,” she said.

“You were cool if you skated with Shooter and you kept up with Shooter. The man meant the world to me,” Salisbury resident Laura Lockwood said.

She last saw Frisby about two weeks before he died, when he was at home, in the care of hospice. She played a video of a girl skating for him, accompanied by music he would recognize as suitable for shuffle skating.

“He wouldn’t open his eyes but when he heard that, he smiled and he opened his eyes. He looked at me and he smiled,” said Lockwood, who will speak at Frisby’s memorial service.

Lockwood was 9 when her Girl Scout troop had a party at Skateland.

“That’s when I fell in love with skating. I grew up there. My parents would take me on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. They also had private parties … and Wednesday night was School Night. You took your report card and if you got A’s you got a free drink or a free pass. When I was 14, I started working there and I got to know Shooter and his wife. They lived in Fruitland and Shooter passed our house every time, going to the rink. He picked us up, my sister and I, and took us to Skateland and took us home. My parents were very strict. They didn’t even trust us with a babysitter but they got to know him. My dad would come inside the building to pick us up. He got to know Shooter. He watched his behavior and he trusted him. They thought of us as family,” Lockwood said.

Once, when she was working at the snack bar, an angry man yelled at her and pointed his finger close to her face.

“Shooter jumped the rail. He grabbed that man and wheeled him out of the building. So many of us loved him. He would do anything for anybody,” she said.

Debbie DiCosmo met Frisby when she was about 14, a teenager who spent a lot of time at Skateland.

“I went there on Fridays, Saturdays, on Sundays, for matinee skates. That was my world. I could skate real well. Then when I had my three boys, they all went. I took them when they were younger and taught them how to skate. Shooter was like Dad to everybody. He took kids under his wing. He was amazing. Color was nothing to him. He never saw color or race. He just liked everybody.

“I could take my kids, David, Shawn and Justin Elliott, there on a Saturday, as well as other parents, get them in the door and let them stay from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. Shooter and Jeanette watched over all the kids and acted like they were their own,” DiCosmo said, adding she plans to attend Frisby’s memorial service with her oldest son.

“On skates, Shooter was the best. He was just the best. There was nothing he couldn’t do on skates. He danced on skates, he backward skated, forward skated. He taught a lot of kids how to do stuff like that. He was somebody the kids looked up to at all times. You never saw him with a frown on his face. He was always smiling,” she said.

The Shooter nickname

Frisby’s nickname was bestowed by his mother.

“She gave all of her kids a step-name, a nickname,” Mrs. Frisby said.

“One was Bunk. There was Sissy, Shooter, Squirrely, and he was raised with a cousin and they called him Skeeter. All had S’s, except Bunk. Shooter, he loved guns. After we got married, I gave him a gun for Christmas. Always shotguns. He wanted something he could hunt with. At his funeral, I’m not wearing black. He loved to see me in red. That’s what I’m going to wear, my red dress. I’m telling everybody, don’t dress up. He was a blue jeans and T-shirt guy,” she said.

Frisby worked for Peninsula Roofing more than 25 years, mowed lawns, often without accepting pay, volunteered for Special Olympics and loved his 15 beagles, his wife said.

“Rabbit dogs. He had a bunch of them. He had them all in dog houses. Him and some of the guys got together on Saturdays and went hunting. Oh, he was a dog lover. If you had a dog and you called and said, ‘Hey, I can’t take care of my dog’ he would say, ‘Bring him on.’ If he saw a dog in the cold rain, he came home and got a dog house and took it to that dog and fed it,” his wife said.

“He was my best friend. Whatever I needed, he did it. I had to have back surgery and he slept in the hospital the whole night I was there. He slept in the recliner,” she said.

There were other, earlier trips to hospitals that, sadly, ended with the death of the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Tameka Nicole, whose adoring father called her “Meek-Meek.”

The child developed a heart problem and when she died, he was inconsolable.

“After her death, I bet he cut our yard 20 times in one day. He just wanted to be out there. He was crying and cutting grass. We had her crib in the bedroom with us. I would say, ‘You’re going to sleep in your crib tonight’ and she would say, ‘Yes, Mommy.’ Then I would be in bed and I would roll over on her. She would be beside him, cuddled up. She said, ‘My daddy put me in bed,’” Mrs. Frisby said.

At Skateland, he would skate while pushing her in a stroller.

“Shooter was my baby. When we bought a manufactured home, it had a dishwasher in it. He told them to take the dishwasher out because I had my own personal dishwasher, and it was him. All I had to do was cook. I never had to wash one pot, one pan, one dish. He would say washing dishes kept his hands soft,” she said.

Tributes abound

Many people paid tribute to Frisby in Facebook posts. Someone posted a video from 2015 of him skating in low light, clapping and dancing as the song “Boogie Nights” played.

In a Facebook post, Marie Ash called Frisby “one special guy” and said the world would be “such a happy place if everyone were like Shooter.”

“He was funny, witty, helpful, caring, one heck of a roller skater … He taught me how to backward skate. There were very little fights out there because Miss Dee took no crap. But when there were, Shooter could quell a fight in a heartbeat,” she wrote, referring to Dee Pendleton, who, with her husband Leo, managed Skateland.

Anne Gaylor-Holloway of Salisbury was around 10 when she met Frisby. Later, she worked at Skateland, from the time she was 14 until she was 21.

“I was in the snack bar, in the cash office. I never have a childhood memory that he’s not in. We stayed  in touch all these years. He was the most kind-hearted, generous person I ever met. He was always a gentleman. It’s funny the things that started coming back to me, like when I was 14. I was watching him. He would wash his hands and he had a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I thought that was so weird, but then I thought, he invented the first hand sanitizer,” she said, laughing.

“His wife is wonderful, too. I don’t think they ever met a stranger. Just having them in my life, I can attribute the way I am today to them, as well as to the  managers of Skateland, Dee and Leo. Miss Dee, we thought she was just being tough at the time, but they rounded us. Those adults who were there with us three and four times a week, our parents should be grateful we had them,” she said.

“Men like Shooter come along so little in life. He was the master of the shuffle and the limbo. I can remember every Friday at Skateland seeing him. When he danced on skates it was just magical. He was legendary.”