Gabor, Frank.  Tom Quinn posted these thoughts of Frank: 'For much of our early years, Frank Gabor and I led parallel lives.  While growing up in Willowick we both delivered The Plain Dealer and went to St. Mary Magdalene Grade School, then to St. Joe’s. In our twenties we both worked at The Plain Dealer, Frank as a printer and I as a reporter.  Frank and his fellow printers would take my typewritten prose and turn it into hot metal type.  We were both drafted into the Army in Lake County and went into the service the same day, Dec. 4, 1967. We did our basic training together at Ft. Campbell, Ky., in barracks formerly occupied by paratroopers from the 101th Airborne Division, who had shipped out to Vietnam.  After basic, Frank and I did further training at different  forts, but both of us ended up in Vietnam for one-year tours of duty, stationed several hundred miles apart. Frank was a mechanic and I was an Army correspondent and photographer. We made it back to the states, were discharged and returned to The Plain Dealer.
In the 1970s, I sat down one day with Frank in The Plain Dealer cafeteria. He was leaving the newspaper, he said, and returning to Vietnam.  It seemed that he had fallen in love with a young Vietnamese woman. It was the last time I would see Frank.  Some years later I learned that he had died.  Our parallel lives had ended, but not my memories of the experiences we shared.

We have this memory from classmate Jack Burke: 'Frankie and I had parallel Plain Dealer routes, he on E. 330th. and I on E. 328th. On Sundays we’d often do our routes together just for the company.  Sunday papers had to be assembled by hand, with comics and ads inserted.  In winter we’d do it in my basement. One Sunday the timbers began to rattle.  Frankie was afraid the house was coming apart, it took some effortfor me to convince him that it was just my Dad sleeping one off.'

Dave Pfriem also remembers Frank as a bright guy.  The two of them were in several classes together over the four years.
Posted By: Administrator - 04-17-2011
Views: 2857