Arthur M Frank (1930 - 1988)

Born 6 Feb 1930 in Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States

Ancestors

Died 27 Mar 1988 at age 58 in Syosset, Nassau, New York, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Gaile Connolly [send private message]

Biography

Arthur M. Frank was the leading mechanical design engineer in the United States between roughly 1970 and 1988. During this time, he was awarded more than two dozen patents and was called upon to provide emergency problem solutions for Apollo 13, as well as identify and correct design issues in a NATO missile and European consortium's satellite.

Although his life was shorter than he and those who loved him had hoped, it was a very full one. He would have said that his most important accomplishment was meeting the obligations of being a good son, brother, and - most of all - parent. As a custodial father, he passed his patriotism, work ethic, joie de vivre, and values to his four children.

Unless specifically noted otherwise, the content of this biography is based on first hand knowledge of Gaile Connolly and/or Art and/or his immediate family as told to Gaile Connolly.

Early Years

Art was born February 6, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Aaron Frank and Mary (Unknown) Frank.^[1]

By 1940 Art's parents had moved to Queens with Art and his sister, Rita.^[2] They subsequently bought a home in Massapequa, where they lived for many years, long beyond their children leaving home.

Art won a coveted acceptance to attend Cooper Union, a small engineering college in Manhattan, New York, highly sought after for its high academic reputation and guarantee of free tuition (which may no longer be the case). He received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1952 and passed the examination for Professional Engineer certification soon afterward.

Following his graduation, Art attempted to join the military but was rejected because of his qualifications for war essential work (this was during the Korean conflict); instead, he was given a job working on ship design at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he remained until the Korean truce.

Family

Art with wife, children, and mother (circa 1966

Art married, and he and his wife, Joy, had four children, Jill, Danny, Nancy, and Paul. The family bought a house in Plainview, Nassau, New York, just a few miles from where Art worked. When all the tradespeople distributed leaflets and business cards, as they often do in new housing developments, Art collected them and stored them away. Many years later, when his home was in need of any repair, he brought out that collection and called an appropriate firm. His logic was that if they were still in business that long afterward then they were probably competent and reliable.

One of Art's first home improvement projects was to test door, window, and outlet seals and add any needed insulation, caulk, and weather stripping to ensure that there were no air leaks. He later compared heating bills with his neighbors who had the same model house as his and found that his costs were about half of theirs. Years later, when the technology was available, Art took an aerial infrared photo of his block in mid-winter and was pleased to discover that his house's exterior was significantly colder than the rest.

Unfortunately, Art's wife was not a good mother to their children, once they outgrew infancy. She was obsessed with cleanliness and woe betide anyone who stepped into the kitchen after she cleaned up following a meal. Severe punishments were doled out for crimes as minor as leaving a fingerprint on the refrigerator door or a few drops of water marring the shine in the sink. She also required the children to eat everything they were served and one child later told the story of nearly choking when being force fed peas. Art did the best he could to mitigate the situation and make it up to the children by taking them on day trips every weekend and longer trips for vacations, leaving his wife at home. When his oldest child was a teenager, she occasionally ran away from home when the abuse was more than she could stand. On these occasions, she would always call Art at work to tell him about it and let him know which friend she was staying with for a few days until she cooled down enough to come home.

Art had long since given up trying to salvage his marriage, but was not willing to risk the near certain loss of custody that he expected would be the result of a divorce. Instead, he told his wife that any time she wanted to leave - without the children - she should feel free to do so. As he described it, one day she did - she ran away with the mailman. The children were 18, 16, 9, and 6 at the time and their mother never made any attempt to contact any of them after that and never let them know her address or telephone number. Art made sure that her parents remained an important part of the family and, as adults, the children all have fond memories of their maternal grandparents. He also bought a sewing machine and read a book about it, then proceeded to learn to make hems and mend clothes. He also learned to braid little girls' hair and cook, clean, and capably perform the rest of the activities of running a household in much the same way. He often remarked that he never understood what some people found so difficult about taking care of a home and children, since everything fell into place so naturally for him, even while working at a full time job. The children always feted him as the object of both mother's day and father's day celebrations.

Career

Following the Korean truce, Art worked for Republic Aviation, a government contractor located in Farmingdale, Suffolk, New York, for a few years until he was lured away to work for Grumman Corporation, his employer for the rest of his life.

Art's employee number was in the low 4,000's, in stark contrast to Gaile Connolly's employee number (she also worked for Grumman, starting in the early 1980's) that was in the 132,000's. Art remembered his early years at Grumman, when Leroy Grumman, the founder and president, knew all his employees by name and stopped by regularly to ask how they were doing and if there was anything they needed, whether personal or professional. Grumman's reputation as a caring employer was as high as its reputation as a designer and builder of innovative aircraft that met the highest quality standards. Cafeterias in several buildings at their Bethpage, Nassau, New York, complex served excellent food, priced at about half of normal retail, prepared and served by widows of former employees (the company always made sure that families of deceased employees had a means of supporting their families),

Art's initial assignment was to a landing gear design group, and that became his specialty, although he later applied his talents to many other design tasks. At the time of his death, approximately 80% of all then current US Navy aircraft had landing gear that included use of his patents that had been assigned to Grumman.

Original Gulfstream II Advertisement

Gulfstream II

When Grumman re-designed its Gulfstream (a highly successful turbo-prop business aircraft), the resulting Gulfstream II was a state-of-the-art jet. Art designed its landing gear and two critical requirements were expected to be very difficult to meet. Wheel wells (the space where wheels are stored during flight) were unusually shallow (to maximize passenger comfort) and the extreme range (the maximum distance an aircraft can travel before needing to refuel) required equally extreme weight conservation. Art's Gulfstream II landing gear design included three separate patents for the geometry of the way it folded for storage in the wheel wells, as well as use of brand new alloys developed specifically for this program. A prototype of his landing gear design was constructed at a cost of about $130,000 (in 1960's dollars) to demonstrate the unique motion of the main gear as it moved between stowed and down positions.

F-14 Tomcat

F-14 (Tomcat) Dimension Drawing

Art was the lead engineer on the landing gear for the F-14, a United States Navy two-seat fighter. All aircraft have critical need to minimize total weight but Navy aircraft also must have very strong landing gear to withstand the extreme forces of carrier launch and recovery (the Navy's word for "landing", often described as a "controlled crash"). In order to submit a winning bid for the contract to build this aircraft, many thought that Grumman had overstated what was a realistically achievable weight, but Art brought the landing gear in under the weight limit allocated to it and then lent his talent to the engineers working on the wing moving mechanism (the F-14 has swing-wings that change configuration during flight and must also be able to fold next to the fuselage to fit in cramped storage space aboard a carrier) to bring that in under weight also. At the rollout ceremony Art was awarded a rare and highly coveted F-14 watch, designed for the occasion with a limited production of about a dozen.

Lunar Module (LEM)

Lunar Module and Apollo 13

Affectionately called the LEM by Grummanites, but more commonly known as the Lunar Lander, this may well have been Grumman's greatest achievement. The body, made of little more than aluminum foil (not very different from what is used in most kitchens to wrap leftover food), was all that separated two astronauts and their equipment from space. This vehicle had to separate from the command module (the vehicle that carried the astronauts to the moon and back) while in lunar orbit, navigate to a soft landing on the moon, then lift off from the moon and dock with the command module, after which it was jettisoned because it could not survive re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Realistic test of the LEM was not possible because the LEM's operating environment could be neither duplicated nor simulated on Earth and, despite a plethora of theories, there was no actual knowledge of the nature of the surface of the moon on which it would land. Art stepped into this void (pun intended), with responsibility for the design of the landing struts and pads, as well as the docking mechanism.

When the first moon landing was made flawlessly, the celebration at Grumman was indescribable. Little did anyone imagine that the real test of the LEM was yet to come. When disaster struck the command module during the Apollo 13 mission, the LEM was urgently needed as a life support system for the astronauts until they had to move back to the command module for reentry. Immediately after an oxygen tank explosion crippled the command module, Mission Control in Houston, Texas called Grumman. They had no idea what kind of assistance would be needed, but knew only that needs would become apparent as the mission evolved and immediate solutions would be critical. Leroy Grumman (founder, CEO, and board chairman at the time) personally telephoned Art and three other Grumman engineers (who combined to know everything - literally - about the LEM) in the middle of the night. They were told to pack a bag and be ready in a half hour. Art protested that he had four children at home, so Leroy Grumman's wife arrived (in the car sent to pick up Art) to take care of his children. The four engineers were driven to Grumman, where a Gulfstream was waiting to fly them to a nearby air base. From there, they boarded four fighter jets for the trip to Houston. The Grumman team remained in Houston until the astronauts safely returned. While there, they rapidly designed several instant modifications to the LEM's capabilities, as needs arose, until the astronauts returned to the crippled command module for reentry. Mrs. Grumman remained at Art's house, caring for his four children the whole time he was in Houston.

Space Tools

A whole new set of requirements drove the need to develop brand new tools for use in gravity free environments. One of Art's first space tool creations was a device that looked a lot like a pogo stick. An astronaut could strap him/her-self on it in order to gain leverage while performing mechanical tasks. It was successfully used on many space missions and later evolved into the Manned Manipulator Unit, or MMU, (not to be confused with the more recent Manned Maneuvering Unit using the same acronym) which completely contained the astronaut during performance of extra-vehicular tasks. Art also adapted familiar tools (i.e., hammers. screw drives, pliers, etc.) for use in space.

The last program Art worked on was the Strategic Defense Initiative (or SDI, but more popularly known as "star wars"). The concept of the long solar arrays extending from the International Space Station is based on his original design for a cooling system to dissipate the heat resulting from use of machines.

Other Programs

Art developed a reputation for being the go-to person whenever a design problem seemed insurmountable and he always came through. He had a gift for immediately seeing all the relevant parameters and ignoring everything else to proceed directly to the most simple, elegant, complete, efficient, cost effective, and rapidly implemented solution. For the last fifteen years of his career, he often worked briefly on many programs rather than being assigned to a single program. He was called in to help when a program encountered problems that their engineers were unable to solve. On two occasions, he was literally "loaned" by Grumman to the government, which then provided his services to European programs that were foundering on unsurmountable obstacles.

In one of these instances, a missile developed by a consortium of European countries needed its fins, which were folded flat against the body during launch, to deploy within milliseconds of launch or the missile would not be stable. Art designed a pyrotechnic system (yes, fireworks, but greatly miniaturized in scale) that did the job. The other time, Art was sent by NASA to provide mechanical solutions for a NATO satellite during its development.

A Grumman program to develop a small vehicle that was deployed in the field to identify mines without blowing them up (in order to map a safe path for troops to traverse the area) was in trouble and Art came to its rescue several times. Each time, he recommended a major change in the design approach of the offending subsystem. Each time, the program manager insisted that he did not have the time to start over. After solving several problems with quickie fixes, Art finally pointed out to the manager that he never had time to do it right but always managed to find time to fix it. He began to call the vehicle "the mummy", fuming in exasperation that all the band aids that were applied to its flaws completely covered the original thing. In preparation for a design review, a young engineer was assigned to cover the portion related to mechanical capabilities. After spending much time with Art to learn the mechanical intricacies, the engineer began his presentation to the Army brass by saying "I am going to discuss the mechanical capabilities of the mummy" and then had to try to explain why used that term! He really thought that was the name of the vehicle.

F-111F Mounted on Aircraft Carrier Intrepid

There seems to be no end to the number and diversity of Grumman programs in which Art played an important role.

When the aircraft carrier Intrepid was permanently docked in Manhattan, New York, New York, United States and turned into a museum, Art designed the supports on which the airplanes (which appear to be just launched), rest.

X-29 Forward Swept Wing Aircraft

Art not only designed the landing gear for the X-29, an experimental forward swept wing aircraft, he also designed the landing gear for a mockup of it to be displayed at air shows. There were some strange requirements for the mock-up, including capability to withstand an earthquake of some specified strength on the Richter scale because it was anticipated that it might be displayed in California!

Although Art never had anything to do with Grumman's best known commercial product, canoes, he did contribute to the study of windmills very early in the exploration of alternatives to oil and he was involved in the design solution developed to repair flaws in the flexible buses that were the only Grumman product that ever had a design quality failure.

Work Ethic and Relationships

Engineering drawings are done on a variety of standard paper sizes (8.5" x 11", 11" x 17", 17" x 22", 22" x 34", 34" x 42", rarely larger). Art insisted that all drawing can fit on 8.5" x 11" and refused to look at larger drawings than that, driving engineers who reported to him to utter frustration, at which point he would amaze them by rendering the needed drawing on "A" size paper to show them. Everyone who worked with or for him was in abject awe of the things he could do, as well as the style in which he did them.

Art was able to objectively assess his own capabilities with the same clarity he applied to his work; he knew, with absolute certainty, the extent of his knowledge, skills, and abilities and never promised anything he could not deliver, either in capability or the time required. A very large man physically, his brilliance and personality were both also larger than life. Although universally liked personally, he was often a thorn in the side of those more concerned with looking good than being good and intimidating to those less competent. Often described as arrogant, he claimed that there was nothing wrong with arrogance as long as it was earned.

Interests

Art pursued many interests, all with the passion for excellence that was his hallmark. All his recreational activities were rooted in one of the two motivations that were constant throughout his life: making mechanical things and learning.

Short Term Hobbies

Art enjoyed flying small airplanes for several years, but no longer engaged in that activity in his later years. Another hobby, home improvement, also only held finite interest for him; when his home had everything he wanted, he stopped modifying it.

Bridge

Art was one of many engineers who are drawn to playing bridge, probably because the typical engineering thought process mirrors the thinking style required to succeed at bridge. After learning the game in a social environment, Art was introduced to the competitive level at the weekly duplicate bridge game sponsored by Grumman. He began to form partnerships with other players who also played at more rigorous local duplicate bridge clubs, as well as local, regional, and national tournaments. As his partnerships grew and strengthened, he, too, sought to play against more capable opponents in more competitive contests.

Although Art continued to play at the Grumman bridge game, it was for fun. To grow a partnership and maintain it at a peak competitive edge requires regular play together. Art was doing this with each of three partners, much the way a sports team continues to practice regularly. It does not often happen that four people all have built and maintained partnerships with each of the other three, but that was the case here. As a result, when these four people entered team events (bridge events are held for entrants who are a partnership of two or a team of four), they had an edge of each pair knowing how the other was likely to bid and play any hand. While Art enjoyed a good deal of local success in Long Island and New York City bridge circles, his reputation as a top level bridge player was based on the success enjoyed by this team, which was favored to win or place highly in any event they entered. Even during the last year of his life (recovering from massive cancer surgery for the first half and suffering the effects of chemotherapy in the second half), Art continued to win some pair events and several team events.

1929 Mercedes Replica

When Art decided to build a kit car, he started by buying a very badly rusted old Volkswagen Beetle and a 1929 Mercedes kit. After discarding the decaying body and seats, he was able to take advantage of his privilege to use the Grumman shop equipment to sandblast the pan, engine, and other parts he wanted to re-use. The engine he rebuilt was more like a completely brand new engine than a rebuilt one! When he discovered that wiring diagrams were not included, he called the kit manufacturer and was told that they didn't have any, so he wired his car he created a complete set of drawings, which the manufacturer then gratefully purchased from him. He worked slowly and steadily, with his usual precision. Although he planned to apply for a vanity license plate with the number "1970VW", when his life was complete the car was only almost complete. One of his sons later put the final touches on the car.

Swimming

Art was devoted to swimming. He swam at the "Y" near his house in winter and his community's outdoor pool in summer, before going home to make dinner. His ritual never varied; he always swam a half mile, alternating laps between freestyle and breast stroke. He also saw to it that his children were strong swimmers and developed enjoyment for the sport, as well as appreciation of the exercise benefits.

Social Life

Unlike almost all the women Art met after his divorce, he had no interest in marriage while he had children at home, so for the first ten years his dating relationships lasted only until the woman gave up on him as a potential marriage partner.

One of his bridge partners, Gaile Connolly, had been married for the first few years of their partnership, then went through an especially difficult and protracted divorce. They played bridge before, during, and after her divorce. The notion of any romantic interest had not occurred to either of them because of their thirteen year age difference, plus their roles in each other's lives were very clearly defined - they were bridge partners. When she was finally free to begin her engineering career, Gaile worked at Grumman. Once, on the day of their standing bridge date, they happened to meet at the pool and both had the same question - "What are you doing here?". Both also had the same answer - "I belong to this Y and always swim here". They discovered that they both swam half miles, but Gaile did it all freestyle. Her freestyle was a little slower Art's and a little faster than his breast stroke so they also spent the same amount of time doing their laps. After that, they often met to swam by plan and frequently had dinner together afterwards before heading to the bridge club, where they played with each other or their other partners. Several months later, the local bridge club scheduled a special game on a Saturday night and Gaile asked Art if he was free that evening and would like to play in it. A few years later, he told her that he had no idea he was going to respond as he did until he heard himself say "I'm free that night, but don't want to play bridge. Would you like to have dinner instead?". She was shocked by that and stood dumbfounded for a long pause, literally thinking about whether or not she would like to go to dinner with him before finally deciding that she would!

Their first date was like no other date Gaile had in the few years she had been single. Art showed up with a bouquet of flowers and named a restaurant where he had made a reservation (the best one In her town) and asked if she knew where it was and how to get to it. Their conversation that evening did not include anything about work or bridge or swimming. Instead, they became acquainted for the first time; over the prior several years, the only things they had ever discussed related to the three main interests they shared! They discovered that they had identical values on many issues and (as their respective children observed on many occasions over the next six years) their thoughts and ideas on any topic, as well as their direct style of expressing them, were identical.

They found many ways to combine all their shared interests. One particularly memorable occasion was a five day vacation, during which they took three ferry trips, visited Art's son, went to a state fair with Gaile's son and daughter-in-law, played in a regional bridge tournament (winning one event there), visited a clock museum, a trolley museum, and a castle, and went to a jai alai game (the first for both of them).

Final Year

Art experienced a few scattered episodes of hiccups after a meal and said it felt like food wasn't getting all the way down. He saw a doctor, who ordered tests, and the diagnosis was esophageal cancer located at the gastro-esophageal junction.

Surgery and Recovery

After a ten hour surgery that included both thoracic and abdominal incisions to remove a section of his esophagus and a smaller section of his stomach, then relocate his stomach above his diaphragm (where it looked like a third lung on x-rays), there was finally some good news. His tumor was fully contained within the wall of his esophagus and he could expect to recover fully with no further treatment, although he would be checked carefully every three months.

Recovering from the massive surgery was not easy or fast. Four months later, Art was able to return to work, but was only able to work part time for the next four months. Two of his designs during were submitted for (and posthumously awarded) patents.

Recurrence

Art passed his first three month exam with flying colors, but had devastating news at the second one. Cancer cells were found in a lymph node. His surgeon turned his care over to an oncologist, who recommended chemotherapy as a palliative treatment and wanted to enroll Art in a study that did not seem to offer much hope of success but was guaranteed to have very serious side effects. It was a simple decision to turn this down.

Art and Gaile set out to learn everything there was to know about his cancer, which was extremely rare in the United States but very common in a few isolated pockets in the world, of which Japan was the only country with advanced medical capabilities. They had to literally sneak into a medical school library (using phony student ID's) to do their research. They learned a lot of very discouraging things:

• Art's care had been at probably the most prominent facility in the world - the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, New York, New York, United States. His surgeon was one of two doctors in the world who developed and performed this surgery. The oncologist who pressured him to enter his study was chief of the oncology department there and had authored the chapter on gastro-esophageal cancer that Art and Gaile found in a medical encyclopedia. It stated that, as one would expect, any tumor that breached either the internal or external wall of the esophagus had a zero percent five year survival rate, but it also stated that any cancer that was fully contained but encompassed the circumference of the esophagus between its walls had a 2% five year survival rate. This was Art's case (stated by his surgeon, included in the pathology report, and visible on the pictures). The unavoidable conclusion was that either his internationally acclaimed surgeon, who worked in very close association with the author of this information, was incompetent or he deliberately lied to his patient.

• The process by which medical treatments for all diseases come to exist in the United States is terrifying.
  1. One or more scientists, working in a laboratory, happens to discover a substance that might possibly have the ability to cure a disease. They publish a paper about their work and other scientists examine the substance. If there is a consensus that it might have curative properties then the next step is taken.^[3]
  2. The substance is tested on animals to see if it does have curative potential. If it does then the process moves to human trials, performed in phases.^[3]
  3. A Phase 1 study is performed by enrolling patients who have been evaluated to have less than a one year remaining life span. The study has two purposes - to determine whether the substance has curative properties for humans and to determine the maximum dose that can be used. It is expected that some patients will die of overdose and others may suffer very serious organ damage from side effects. Still others, who were part of the control group, will have not received any treatment for their disease, thereby removing even the miniscule chance of recovery. The study they wanted to enroll Art in was a Phase 1 study, but this description of it had not been given to him. If a dosage of the substance can be found that does not kill the patient but is sufficient to fight the disease then the process moves to the next phase.^[3]
  4. A Phase 2 study also enrolls patients in two groups, so that half of them receive no treatment for their disease at all. The purpose is to determine the extent of the curative ability of the substance. If it appears to achieve better results than the best currently approved treatment method, the next phase is entered.^[3]
  5. A Phase 3 study enrolls three groups of patients. One receives the test treatment, one receives the best currently approved treatment, and the other group receives no treatment.^[3]

• The current so-called standard treatment had a very low chance of success and was accompanied by side effects of pretty extreme discomfort and risk of permanent damage to other organs.^[3]

• There were about a dozen different studies of chemotherapy treatments that were underway. Some were already closed to addition of new patients, others had limits that excluded esophageal cancers. The remaining ones all seemed more frightening than even the current treatment.^[3]

• There was one study of a biological treatment, which was very impressive. It seemed that a biological treatment was the most likely to someday (unfortunately in the future) become the way to cure this disease. To be eligible for this study, a patient had to have not ever had chemotherapy and had to submit a tissue sample to the researchers, which might or might not lead to acceptance in the program. Art's doctors at Sloan Kettering refused to send the needed tissue sample, saying that biological treatments were not worth pursuing.^[3]

Finally, Art and Gaile expanded their research efforts to see what was being done in other countries. They found the first glimmer of hope in Japan, where his type of cancer was very common. A doctor there was having an 85% success rate at shrinking tumors rapidly and dramatically after only a single treatment with a greatly attenuated form of vaccinia virus. This is the same virus that causes a whole family of diseases, including chicken pox and smallpox. Art and Gaile telephoned the doctor in Japan, who spoke some English, but not very well. They managed to overcome the language barrier and concluded that this was Art's best chance of beating his disease. The doctor offered to work with an American doctor to provide Art with his treatment if they could find one willing to participate in his program.

They set out to find an appropriate doctor, but it turned out to be impossible. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical treatments) had completely banned import of smallpox virus, no matter how safe it had been made by attenuation. Art and Gaile could not find any doctor willing to battle the FDA to get permission for the Japanese medicine to come into the country.

Their next option was to go to Japan for the treatment. This had a lot of drawbacks, including the concern about the need for good communication between patient and caregivers that could not be met when they did not have a common language. Also, the thought of being far from the support of his large and very close family at such a traumatic time was daunting. Despite all the negatives, this was his only real chance, so he continued to pursue this course of action through the next step, which was to request permission to travel to Japan. Because of Art's security clearance at work, permission for all foreign travel was required. Unbelievably, his request, which would have been easily approved if it were for a vacation trip, was denied because of the possibility of his cognition being compromised during treatment.

With no other options, Art began the standard chemotherapy program. He was not part of the lucky 2% and his spreading disease began to manifest itself in a growing list of symptoms, exacerbated by the side effects of chemotherapy. He wanted to remain at home, but finally opted to enter the hospital when he needed a higher level of painkillers than he could receive at home. One of the most awful experiences in the hospital was when a psychiatrist showed up in his room, claiming to have been referred by his oncologist who observed that he was feeling depressed. That was when Gaile snapped - she gave the doctor the count of ten to get out of the room before she physically threw him out. He did, but had the gall to present a bill for that "visit"; needless to say it was not paid and he was reported for fraud and unethical conduct, but probably no action was ever taken against him.

Art was alive only a few weeks longer, during which one of the most brilliant minds in the United States was increasingly impaired by a morphine induced haze. He died March 27, 1988 in Syosset Hospital in Syosset, Nassau, New York, United States. Following a funeral service March 29, 1988, Art was buried in New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, Suffolk County, New York, United States.^[4] A flight of four Grumman aircraft, an F-14, EA-6B, E-2C, and a Gulfstream II, all with landing gear designed by Art, surprised the large group attending the graveside service. After overflying the site, the F-14 peeled off in an imitation of a missing man formation. Twenty-eight years later, as this is written, Art is still very much the missing man in Gaile Connolly's life.

Epilogue

Art's four children had earned six college degrees, including at least one per child, while he was alive, but only one was married and he had not yet become a grandfather. His first grandson was born two years later. Later, two more children married and each had two children. Art would have been very proud of the directions his children pursued and the successes they earned, had he only been able to see it all transpire.

Left to their own, marriage might have occurred to Art and Gaile someday in the future, after all their respective children had become well established in their adult lives. They discussed the subject when Art was sick; they planned to marry only if necessary to solve an insurance problem if his medical expenses approached the lifetime limit of his insurance. Gaile moved into his house for a few months after his surgery, then back to her own home when he had recovered. She moved back in again for a few months before his final hospitalization. After his death, she returned home again, this time accompanied by one of Art's children, who was not yet ready to live on her own despite having attained the age of twenty-six, She lived with Gaile for three years until she finally felt ready to become completely independent.,

Art and Gaile had visited her father when they were optimistic about his recovery. About a year after Art's death, Gaile's father told her that, on that occasion, Art had made a deal with him to purchase her mother's engagement ring and present it to her on the day he got his clean bill of health. That ring, in her possession since her father's death eight years later, now has a doubly significant meaning to her.

Sources

^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} United States Census, 1930, database with images, FamilySearch (accessed 15 January 2016), Arthur M Frank in entry for Aaron H Frank, 1930.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} United States Census, 1940, database with images, FamilySearch (accessed 15 January 2016), Authur Frank in household of Aaron A Frank, Assembly District 4, Queens, New York City, Queens, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 41-1309, sheet 6A, family 97, NARA digital publication T627 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012), roll 2745.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8} The description of the medical research process, as it is conducted in the United States, is not intended to be an accurate, or possibly even a factual, account. It is the purely subjective memory of what Gaile Connolly learned about the process, shaded by the emotional impact on her at the time.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Find a Grave, memorial for Arthur M. Frank, (accessed January 15, 2016).