Frank Cuva

Frank was always a kind and thoughtful gentleman. He excelled at whatever he did. He achieved excellence in Bodybuilding and fitness training, Horse Training, Photography and Bonsai. He even pursued acting.

Frank’s wife of 54 years Karen, and his son by a previous marriage Marc, will miss him greatly.

Frank was born in Detroit, Michigan. Frank’s father was a mean drunk, so Frank decided to get strong to protect his mother. When he was 12 years old, he made his own weights out of tin cans filled with concrete. He subscribed to Health and Strength magazine to learn how to train properly. Later he joined a gym and started competing. He won Michigan Best Chest category in a competition. He could bench press over 200 pounds. One day his dad was drunk and getting ready to hit his mom. He stepped up and said, “No More” and his dad stopped and never hit her again. Frank was bigger than his dad and he made his point. That was one of his proudest young memories.

Frank served in the Korean War for 2 years. He was, of course, in charge of the fitness program in boot camp. He shot the Long Tom 155 mm caliber field guns. Since that gun fired a long distance, he didn’t have to see the close-up battle, thankfully.

He wanted to be an actor, so he moved to Hollywood, CA to pursue that. Westerns were on TV, so he learned to ride a horse. He was in many plays and a few movies. He worked in sales to supplement his income as acting is a tough way to make a living.

After he and Karen got married, they got into horses. It gradually grew to become Cuva’s Training Stables. They had 5 acres and 55 horses on the ranch for boarding, training, and giving lessons. Frank competed successfully in many shows in English, Western, Dressage and carriage driving events. At about age 55 they decided it was getting to be too hard physically to work that hard and changed to a new career.

Frank and Karen had started bodybuilding and competing in that sport while having the horse ranch. They did very well and won many awards. The last competition was the Internationals in Japan, which was by invitation. It was quite an honor, and the Japanese really treated us wonderfully. We both placed in that event, and we were among the oldest contestants.

People were asking us for advice at the gym, so we decided to open a private training studio. At this time private trainers were mostly working out of people’s homes and charged a high fee. Frank thought that if we had a private gym, we could charge less as we would save driving time. Frank named it “Forever Young Private Fitness Studio”. It was a success and we had to hire other trainers to help us. We both really enjoyed training people and established many long-term friendships over the years. We had the first private training studio in the LA area. Now they are everywhere. We wrote a book on fitness training, self-published and sold many copies.

Frank took up Photography as a hobby and Bonsai. He won many prestigious awards in both hobbies. In Bonsai he won the “John Naka Award” which was a great honor. His photographs have been shown sold in many galleries including the Phippen Museum in Prescott.

We continued to train people until Frank was 80 years old. That is when we both retired and moved to Prescott Valley. Frank continued his hobbies in Photography and Bonsai.

We have enjoyed traveling to many countries and have fond memories of our trips.

We have had many adventures together and a full life. Frank will be dearly missed. He was 91 years old.

Be sure to look at the pictures I will be posting.