This article provides a summary of the life of Frank Gordon, a man from Montclair, NJ who struggled with mental illness. It describes him as a shy child, high school student in the 1960s, and public works employee in the 1980s. Gordon lived in a healthcare facility but spent most days wandering Montclair. He was well-known in the community and received support from local organizations. Gordon died unexpectedly at age 53 after leaving the hospital against medical advice. The article explores his life and decline through interviews with those who knew him.

1. Every Week The Montclair Times
Serving Montclair Since 1877
THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2002
Second Class Postage Price 60 cents
www.montclairtimes.com Vol. 126 No. 22 Paid at Montclair, N.J. 07042 44 Pages Published Every Week
A Local Man Who Lost His Way
By ANGELA G. KING
of The Montclair Times
He was a soldier, a husband and,
by many accounts, an intellectual.
Tall and slender, he was the spitting
image of his mother.
He was the shy youngster who
some recall living with his mother in
a flat above a store on Bloomfield
Avenue and, later, on North Fullerton
Avenue.
Others remember him as a quiet,
affable student at Montclair High
School in the mid-1960s. During the
’80s he could be seen about town
patching and cleaning local streets as
an employee for Montclair’s Department
of Public Works.
Toward the end of his life, he
became the ubiquitous ambler who
business owners along Church Street
and South Fullerton Avenue looked
out for. Doctors and nurses who
treated him during his countless trips
to Mountainside Hospital’s emergency
room exchanged greetings
with him when they spotted him on
the street. Former co-workers and
classmates occasionally lent him
money or cigarettes when they ran
into him.
Yet even though there were flowers
arranged on a Church Street
bench and separate services held in
Montclair and Newark in his memory,
precious few people got to know
Frank Gordon very well before he
took his last breath at age 53 last
Photo by Tyson Trish
IN LOVING MEMORY—A tribute left by one of
the many Mountainside Hospital nurses who came
to cherish the late Frank Gordon.

2. month.
To those who saw him unkempt and detached as he drifted along
Bloomfield Avenue or sat perched on some bench around town, Gordon
may have appeared to be just another homeless vagrant. But in fact, he
lived 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 I
used to say, ‘Don’t treat yourself like this,’” said Sheltry Ward, owner of
the South Street home that was Gordon’s last address. “He lived better
than 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’t
care 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, Gordon
would 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 at
the Hospital Center at Orange, suffered from a mental illness.
Gordon had to be held down at times just to make sure he was
dressed appropriately for the weather. Yet he refused to be
psychologically evaluated or treated while she knew him,
Ward said.
“It was a shame that he walked away from life, but I understand
why he did it,” offered Richard Groves, while helping to serve
lunch recently at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on South Fullerton
Avenue. “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 at
the local feeding programs that Gordon frequented at St. Luke’s
and the Salvation Army, Groves remembers riding his bicycle
around town and stopping to talk to Gordon about music whenever
he ran into him.
But one subject Gordon shied away from, said Groves, a 70-
year old Korean War veteran now living in East Orange, was
the time he spent in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
A probe into Gordon’s life by The Times revealed that things
might have begun to unravel for him in the military. Prior to that,
according to those who remember Gordon as a child and into early
adulthood, he seemed to navigate life on fairly conventional terms.
Born Frank Arthur Jr. at Montclair Community Hospital on
Oct. 9, 1948, according to vital records obtained by The Times,
Gordon was named after his father, who was 65 years old
when his son came into the world. By 1950, state records
indicate, Frank Sr. was dead, leaving his 36-year-old wife to
raise young Frank alone. She supported the family working
behind the lunch counter at the old S.S. Kresge five-and-dime
store in Montclair, and later the S.S. Kresge in Bloomfield.
Mae Curtis remembers the Gordons living on Bloomfield
Avenue in Montclair when the son was still a child. “His mother
sheltered him a lot,” said Curtis, who has lived in town all of
her 62 years. “He never really played a lot with other kids.”
“When I met him, he was on North Fullerton Avenue,” said
lifelong Montclair resident Bruce Tyler. “There’s a lady named
Geraldine Sherman who used to take care of me when I was a kid.

3. She knew Frank’s mother. I used to play with her kids and every
once in awhile we would go over to the Gordons’ house.”
As he grew older, Gordon became a dapper, easygoing guy
who loved to play the congas, Tyler said. That’s why he was so
shocked when Gordon disappeared for a few years, only to
resurface 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 years
later, he was a changed man. I don’t know what happened. To
this day it confounds me.”
Gordon attended George Inness Junior High School and Montclair
High 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 loner
throughout high school, according to Montclair High alumnus Lonnie
Brandon, who’s now the town’s director of parks, recreation
and cultural affairs.
Lt. Roger Terry, bureau commander of the Montclair Police
Department’s juvenile division, remembers taking a couple of
science classes with Gordon at Montclair High.
“He was just an average guy…a guy you would have
never expected to end up like he ended up,” said Terry. “He got
decent 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 although
the Vietnam War was raging at the time, he never got beyond
working on an artillery detail in Fort Bliss, Texas, before being
discharged in June 1970.
The young private managed to obtain a National Defense Service
Medal, and even got married to an 18-year-old Newark
native, before leaving the Army. According to New Jersey Superior
Court 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 just
months after he got out of the Army. But by the ’80s, he got
himself together enough to land a job working in the street division
of Montclair’s Public Works Department.
“He was an excellent worker,” said Randy Richardson, who was
Gordon’s supervisor for about seven years. “He was always
very punctual. He got along excellent with his workers and
supervisors. He worked hard.”
Gordon’s career hit a snag when he went to California on a
two-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 another
year before he suddenly quit his job, according to Richardson.
“No one really knew what happened to him,” said Larry
Hawkins Sr., a public works supervisor who worked in Montclair’s
sanitation department at the time. “I just know one day
they said he decided that he was going to quit and go back to
school. We just took it for granted that’s exactly what he did. We
found 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’s
how he heard Gordon was an outpatient at East Orange General
Hospital, and ended up visiting him there once.

4. “He was under medication then,” Hawkins said. “They said
as long as he was on medication he was all right.”
Some who live in or pass through Montclair say Gordon was
homeless for awhile before finally securing a room at the South Street
Home in Newark. But he always migrated back to the town where
he was born and raised.
“There were periods where he would come into the library almost
every day,” said John Skillin, audio/visual coordinator for the
main branch of the Montclair Public Library on South Fullerton
Avenue. “He would come into the library and spend hours poring
over these books, looking over blueprints and designs of automobiles
and airplanes.”
Gordon collected model cars, occasionally giving a Corvette or
a 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 Diane
Israel, owner of the Essex Fine Arts Gallery on that street. “We
all knew him. We used to watch out for him, make sure no one
was harassing him.”
Raymond Badach, owner of the Twenty-Eight and Raymond’s
restaurants on Church Street, remembers Gordon as “a
very animated soul” that “most people seemed to accept. Frank
was 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 to
South Street owner Sheltry Ward, Gordon went to Mountainside Hospital
on April 15 complaining of pains in his stomach, but departed
the facility before it could be determined what the problem was.
Some time after 11 that night, Michelle Galazzo, an Emergency
Room nurse at Mountainside Hospital who was off duty and
driving home from a social engagement, saw Gordon lying
on the street at the corner of Pine and Walnut streets.
“I called 911 from my cell phone, and I got out and I started
CPR on him,” she said. Four police officers and an ambulance
arrived at the scene before Gordon was taken to Mountainside and
pronounced dead at 11:55 p.m.
He now lies buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside. His
mother is in a nursing home in Cedar Grove, too sick to comprehend
her son’s death.
But for more than a few in Montclair, his absence is all too
glaring.
“Frank Gordon always welcomed you with a broad smile and
a big hello,” noted Anne Liscio, clinical coordinator for Mountainside’s
emergency department. “His quick wit and gift of gab
made every hospital visit an adventure. We will miss him.”