BEN'S COURT.(death of Central Park fixture Ben Wildofsky)

Devotees of the 1.6-mile running track around the Central Park Reservoir pretty much take for granted the sight of the regulars, who not only walk or run but also make the benches at the East Eighty-fifth Street pump house, by the track, a kind of home. So it was natural that the sudden disappearance, not long ago, of Ben Wildofsky, who could reliably be seen walking on the track or sitting on his bench facing the reservoir--an area known to some fellow-benchwarmers as Ben's Court--was noticed. Ben was a small, seventy-three-year-old ex-runner with wispy gray hair, metal-framed eyeglasses, a deeply weather-beaten face, and a military-style knapsack slung over a hunched back. He wore khaki Army shorts in the summer and warmup pants in the cold. In motion, he kept one arm bent, the fist clenched, and the other arm hanging limp at his side. He minded his own business, looking solemn, not striving for eye contact with anybody.

One day recently, Donald Kaplan, a middle-aged, muscular runner with graying-blond hair and a matching mustache, was sitting in Ben's Court when Alberto Arroyo--the eighty-seven-year-old mayor (thanks to a pronouncement by R. Giuliani) of Central Park--called out, "Did you hear that Ben died?"

"Died? Ben died? Ben, who sits with me here?"

In a matter of days, Kaplan, who is usually in charge of nothing, found himself in charge of talking about Ben Wildofsky. He started spreading the word to runners whose names he didn't even know.

"Ben died," he said.

"Who?"

"Little Ben, with the backpack."