Every Week The Montclair TimesServing Montclair Since 1877

THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2002 Second Class Postage Price 60 centswww.montclairtimes.com Vol. 126 No. 22 Paid at Montclair, N.J. 07042 44 Pages

Published Every Week

A Local Man Who Lost His WayBy ANGELA G. KINGof The Montclair Times

He was a soldier, a husband and,by many accounts, an intellectual. Tall and slender, he was the spittingimage of his mother. He was the shy youngster whosome recall living with his mother ina flat above a store on BloomfieldAvenue and, later, on North FullertonAvenue. Others remember him as a quiet,affable student at Montclair HighSchool in the mid-1960s. During the’80s he could be seen about townpatching and cleaning local streets asan employee for Montclair’s Departmentof Public Works. Toward the end of his life, hebecame the ubiquitous ambler whobusiness owners along Church Streetand South Fullerton Avenue lookedout for. Doctors and nurses whotreated him during his countless tripsto Mountainside Hospital’s emergencyroom exchanged greetingswith him when they spotted him onthe street. Former co-workers andclassmates occasionally lent himmoney or cigarettes when they raninto him. Yet even though there were flowersarranged on a Church Streetbench and separate services held inMontclair and Newark in his memory,precious few people got to know

Photo by Tyson Trish

IN LOVING MEMORY—A tribute left by one of the many Mountainside Hospital nurses who came to

Frank Gordon very well before he took his last breath at age 53 lastmonth.

To those who saw him unkempt and detached as he drifted alongBloomfield Avenue or sat perched on some bench around town, Gordonmay have appeared to be just another homeless vagrant. But in fact, helived at a modest, tidy healthcare facility on Newark’s south side —and collected a monthly Social Security check — until his death. “Frank looked like he didn’t belong anywhere, and sometimes Iused to say, ‘Don’t treat yourself like this,’” said Sheltry Ward, owner ofthe South Street home that was Gordon’s last address. “He lived betterthan a lot of people. He had three meals a day, someone to do his laundry.” Staff workers at South Street remember Gordon as one who didn’tcare much for television or interacting with the home’s other nine resi-dents, but had plenty to say to them. That is, when he was around. “At least 325 days of the year,” according to Ward, Gordonwould get up each morning, eat breakfast and then head to Montclair— on foot. At the day’s end he would walk back home. Gordon, maintained Ward, who’s also a registered nurse atthe Hospital Center at Orange, suffered from a mental illness.Gordon had to be held down at times just to make sure he wasdressed appropriately for the weather. Yet he refused to bepsychologically evaluated or treated while she knew him,Ward said. “It was a shame that he walked away from life, but I understandwhy he did it,” offered Richard Groves, while helping to servelunch recently at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on South FullertonAvenue. “Frank didn’t want to be involved with the system as it is— grow up, work, have a family. He didn’t want to be bothered with all of that.” A former Montclair resident who still volunteers his time atthe local feeding programs that Gordon frequented at St. Luke’sand the Salvation Army, Groves remembers riding his bicyclearound town and stopping to talk to Gordon about music wheneverhe ran into him. But one subject Gordon shied away from, said Groves, a 70-year old Korean War veteran now living in East Orange, wasthe time he spent in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. A probe into Gordon’s life by The Times revealed that thingsmight have begun to unravel for him in the military. Prior to that,according to those who remember Gordon as a child and into earlyadulthood, he seemed to navigate life on fairly conventional terms. Born Frank Arthur Jr. at Montclair Community Hospital onOct. 9, 1948, according to vital records obtained by The Times,Gordon was named after his father, who was 65 years oldwhen his son came into the world. By 1950, state recordsindicate, Frank Sr. was dead, leaving his 36-year-old wife toraise young Frank alone. She supported the family workingbehind the lunch counter at the old S.S. Kresge five-and-dimestore in Montclair, and later the S.S. Kresge in Bloomfield. Mae Curtis remembers the Gordons living on BloomfieldAvenue in Montclair when the son was still a child. “His mothersheltered him a lot,” said Curtis, who has lived in town all ofher 62 years. “He never really played a lot with other kids.”

“When I met him, he was on North Fullerton Avenue,” saidlifelong Montclair resident Bruce Tyler. “There’s a lady namedGeraldine Sherman who used to take care of me when I was a kid.She knew Frank’s mother. I used to play with her kids and everyonce in awhile we would go over to the Gordons’ house.” As he grew older, Gordon became a dapper, easygoing guywho loved to play the congas, Tyler said. That’s why he was soshocked when Gordon disappeared for a few years, only toresurface dirty, disheveled and wandering the streets. “He used to strike me as a very serious guy,” Tyler recounted.“Then he just disappeared. When I saw him three or four yearslater, he was a changed man. I don’t know what happened. Tothis day it confounds me.” Gordon attended George Inness Junior High School and MontclairHigh School, but no one seems to be able to pinpoint when — or if— he ever graduated. That might be because he was a bit of a lonerthroughout high school, according to Montclair High alumnus LonnieBrandon, who’s now the town’s director of parks, recreationand cultural affairs. Lt. Roger Terry, bureau commander of the Montclair PoliceDepartment’s juvenile division, remembers taking a couple ofscience classes with Gordon at Montclair High. “He was just an average guy…a guy you would havenever expected to end up like he ended up,” said Terry. “He gotdecent grades in school that I know of. He was a very happy-go-lucky kind of guy.” Gordon entered the Army in September 1968, but althoughthe Vietnam War was raging at the time, he never got beyondworking on an artillery detail in Fort Bliss, Texas, before beingdischarged in June 1970. The young private managed to obtain a National Defense ServiceMedal, and even got married to an 18-year-old Newarknative, before leaving the Army. According to New Jersey SuperiorCourt records, the marriage ended in divorce in 1982. Frank Gordon was no stranger to minor run-ins with the police,landing in a Caldwell jail for 30 days on a harassment charge justmonths after he got out of the Army. But by the ’80s, he gothimself together enough to land a job working in the street divisionof Montclair’s Public Works Department. “He was an excellent worker,” said Randy Richardson, who wasGordon’s supervisor for about seven years. “He was alwaysvery punctual. He got along excellent with his workers andsupervisors. He worked hard.” Gordon’s career hit a snag when he went to California on atwo-week vacation, and ended up staying out there for months.“When he returned,” recalled Richardson, “he wasn’t focused.His mind would go and come.” Gordon worked for about anotheryear before he suddenly quit his job, according to Richardson. “No one really knew what happened to him,” said LarryHawkins Sr., a public works supervisor who worked in Montclair’ssanitation department at the time. “I just know one daythey said he decided that he was going to quit and go back toschool. We just took it for granted that’s exactly what he did. Wefound out afterward that he had problems.” “He used to come to my church at Community Baptist

every now and then,” Hawkins elaborated, explaining that that’show he heard Gordon was an outpatient at East Orange GeneralHospital, and ended up visiting him there once. “He was under medication then,” Hawkins said. “They saidas long as he was on medication he was all right.” Some who live in or pass through Montclair say Gordon washomeless for awhile before finally securing a room at the South StreetHome in Newark. But he always migrated back to the town wherehe was born and raised. “There were periods where he would come into the library almostevery day,” said John Skillin, audio/visual coordinator for themain branch of the Montclair Public Library on South FullertonAvenue. “He would come into the library and spend hours poringover these books, looking over blueprints and designs of automobilesand airplanes.” Gordon collected model cars, occasionally giving a Corvette ora Lamborghini to those around town he was especially fond of.He even put together an exhibit of his model cars at the library once. “He was on South Fullerton almost every day,” said DianeIsrael, owner of the Essex Fine Arts Gallery on that street. “Weall knew him. We used to watch out for him, make sure no onewas harassing him.” Raymond Badach, owner of the Twenty-Eight and Raymond’srestaurants on Church Street, remembers Gordon as “avery animated soul” that “most people seemed to accept. Frankwas always kind of lost. He was funny and kind and everything,but he was kind of out there.” Gordon’s death seemed to be just as ironic as his life. According toSouth Street owner Sheltry Ward, Gordon went to Mountainside Hospitalon April 15 complaining of pains in his stomach, but departedthe facility before it could be determined what the problem was. Some time after 11 that night, Michelle Galazzo, an EmergencyRoom nurse at Mountainside Hospital who was off duty anddriving home from a social engagement, saw Gordon lyingon the street at the corner of Pine and Walnut streets. “I called 911 from my cell phone, and I got out and I startedCPR on him,” she said. Four police officers and an ambulancearrived at the scene before Gordon was taken to Mountainside andpronounced dead at 11:55 p.m. He now lies buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside. Hismother is in a nursing home in Cedar Grove, too sick to comprehendher son’s death. But for more than a few in Montclair, his absence is all tooglaring. “Frank Gordon always welcomed you with a broad smile anda big hello,” noted Anne Liscio, clinical coordinator for Mountainside’semergency department. “His quick wit and gift of gabmade every hospital visit an adventure. We will miss him.”