“Please Don’t Remember Me as Frank” — Larry Linville’s Final Wish to Loretta Swit 
Two weeks before he passed in 2000,
Loretta Swit received the kind of late-night phone call that makes your heart drop before you even say hello.
It was past midnight.
The house was dark.
The phone rang.
“Loretta…” a fragile voice said.
She knew it instantly.
Larry Linville.
The man the world knew as Frank Burns.
The man America loved to hate.
They hadn’t spoken much in years.
Life had moved on after MAS*H.
Careers shifted.
Distance grew.
But illness has a way of stripping pride away.
“I didn’t call sooner,” Larry admitted softly, “because I didn’t know how to say this.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sick, Loretta. They’re saying I don’t have long.”
Silence filled her bedroom.
Then he said something she never forgot.
“I’m afraid people will only remember me as Frank.”
Not as Larry.
Not as the man who showed up early, knew everyone’s lines, and carried scenes with quiet precision.
Just Frank.
The fool.
The antagonist.
The punchline.
The next morning, Loretta got on a plane.
No press.
No announcement.
Just one small bag and a heart full of urgency.
When she walked into his hospital room, he was thinner. Weaker.
But when he saw her?
His eyes lit up exactly the way they had on Stage 9 in Malibu.
“You’re still terrifying,” he whispered with a faint smile.
“And you still need a shave,” she replied.
For a moment, they weren’t aging actors.
They were Margaret and Frank again.
Only this time… without the script.
She stayed.
She brought soup from a local deli and fed him when his hands were too unsteady.
She sat through the quiet afternoons.
She even brought an old MAS*H episode — one of their chaotic classics.
They watched themselves at 35.
Young. Sharp. Electric.
“I was so annoying,” Larry murmured.
“No,” she said gently. “You were brilliant. You made people believe in Frank. That’s not easy.”
He looked at her for a long time.
Then he said it.
“My last wish? Don’t remember me as the man who walked away. Don’t remember me only as Frank. Remember me as Larry.”
Her voice didn’t shake.
“I already do.”
A few days later, when he was too weak for visitors, he called her one last time.
“Loretta… I’m glad we found each other again,” he whispered.
“I love you, Larry,” she said.
A pause.
“I love you too,” he replied.
“Goodnight, Margaret.”
“Goodnight, Frank.”
The line went quiet.
She saved the voicemail.
She never deleted it.
Years later, when fans would bring up “that awful Frank Burns,” Loretta would gently correct them.
“Larry Linville made you hate Frank,” she’d say.
“That was his job.”
“But if you’d met the man behind the character?”
“You would have loved him.”
And that’s how she chose to remember him.
Not as the villain.
But as Larry.
