I can’t swear to the fact the first time I met Maggie Frost I heard an explosion, but in my mind there was, because Maggie Frost was a human firecracker.
She had a fire that burned hot and bright and warmed anyone who was near her. Unfortunately, that flame went out last Thursday morning, July 14, at 3:14 when Maggie’s short but intense battle with cancer took her from us all.
I first met Maggie when she started working at WCMY radio in 2016. At first, it was just an occasional hello in the hallway but later morphed into one of the greatest friendships of my life.
We started working directly together in January of 2019 when we launched “The Friday Show.” We referred to it as the radio version of “Seinfeld;” it truly was a show about nothing.
The next month when my mom’s health deteriorated at a rapid pace, Maggie checked in on me daily to see how things were going. When my mom passed away, Maggie was the first one there, to wrap those tiny little skinny arms around me and let me know that my support team was in place.
2019 was the first year Maggie stepped in to coordinate Freezin’ for a Reason, the community food drive held in December in the Handy Foods parking lot, to raise money and collect food to stock the Ottawa food pantry. Freezin’ quickly became Maggie’s passion, coming up with ideas of how to make it better, how it could be more successful. In the three years Maggie was involved with Freezin’, a record amount of money was raised and food collected because the human firecracker, all 5 feet and 90 pounds of her, was not going to let anyone go to bed hungry on her watch.
Maggie had been a reporter for the Times Newspaper for years and never lost that reporter instinct. I would watch her interview politicians, community leaders, high school students and a variety of other folks, always bringing to the table an innate ability to ask the questions we were all thinking. I used to say Maggie could smell a pile of crap 20 miles away. If you were unlucky enough to ever try and get one by her, she would lay you out like a gutted fish.
Mark Strehl, Fox 32 meteorologist and Ottawa native, was the third member of the team on WCMY. Maggie was like our little sister but more times than not, she was taking care of us. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Maggie would give us little gifts, sometimes funny, sometimes useful. We were all doing our show remotely from different parts of the area and Maggie had to produce it all. That’s when we realized she was far more tech savvy than she let on.
Last year, when my marriage came to an end, Maggie checked on me almost every day, whether it was a phone call or text. She wanted to make sure I was eating enough and I was getting along.
It’s a bit too soon not to mourn for Maggie, but I can tell you without fear of contradiction that’s not what she would want. If she thought we were sitting around crying, she would have a string of four-letter words to get us back in line.
I love you, Maggie. I miss you, Maggie. Our lives were touched by your light, and we will never be the same without you. RIP dear friend.
- Jonathan Freeburg is an Ottawa transplant for the past two decades-plus and a regular contributor to 1430 WCMY Radio. He can be reached at newsroom@shawmedia.com.