MORTY FRANK: A Sense of
Mischief
About the snake: Morty Frank smuggled it into the
basement of the house in Lynbrook, on Long Island, and
kept it there for three months without telling anyone,
said his mother, Phyllis. "Until the day he said: `Guess
what, Mom? We have a snake in the basement.'"
She and her husband, Mel, would keep asking what kind
it was, but all Morty would ever say was, "The kind you
can make boots out of." He was sunny but always "a little
mischievous," she added, and he did not much favor the
name Morton.
"When I took him to the pediatrician for the first
time, the doctor said, `What a big name for a little
boy,' " she recalled. "It was my father's name. But to
everyone, he was Morty."
Morty Frank and his wife of one year, Jessica, had
returned from a wedding in California on the day before
the attack. When Phyllis Frank watched the images of the
plane hitting 1 World Trade Center - where Mr. Frank
worked at the institutional sales desk of Cantor
Fitzgerald on the 104th floor - "I knew instantly by the
way it hit, and where it hit, well...." She paused. "I
knew that I was nowhere."
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