Frank Potenza, the former NYPD officer who became well-known to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” viewers as Uncle Frank, passed away this morning. The AP obituary doesn’t give a cause of death, but he was 77 so it could have been literally anything.

On “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the uniformed Potenza was paired in comedy bits with Guillermo Rodriguez, a real-life parking lot security guard for the show… Potenza and his former wife, Conchetta “Chippy” Potenza, were sent by Kimmel on comic “adventures” such as working on a dairy farm and learning self-defense.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a Korean War veteran, Potenza served as a police officer for 20 years before working as a guard in Las Vegas and at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Then [in 2003] Kimmel asked him to move to Los Angeles to work with him.

Bummer. I’m not a huge Kimmel fan but I’m familiar with Uncle Frank from seeing some of his bits. If it’s cool with everyone else, I’m going to mourn the loss of a Korean War vet and police officer of twenty years rather than a TV personality. I’m one of those weirdos who thinks that cops and soldiers are more worthy of respect than entertainers.