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

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 17-JUN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

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....

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