A Compulsion of Words: Morrie Schwartz Edition, Rena Frank Chapter

Last Tuesday "Nightline" on ABC finished concluded its 25-year run with Ted Koppel. The final episode looked back on the most popular episodes Nightlight ever ran, involving retired college professor Morrie Schwartz. He had inspired, through his public battle of Lou Gehrig's Disease, the book "Tuesdays with Morrie" by sportswriter Mitch Albom.

The book appeared in 1998; in typical fashion, my interest lagged the general public's by years. I found a copy at a summer library sale and grabbed it. I read it about six weeks before the Nightlight rebroadcast. This congruence of book and viewing, although not as striking as "The Da Vinci Code" episode discussed last week, is still eerie.

The book touched me on several levels. I had my own Morrie. For 13 years I volunteered with Dorot, a group that served the Jewish elderly in New York. My Morrie, if you will, was Rena Frank, a retired nurse who escaped Germany in 1938 for England, settling into New York in 1952. We spoke at least weekly on the phone. My visits to her apartment at 216 W. 102nd Street lasted all afternoon, fortified by cucumber sandwiches, tea, and cookies. I never left without a bulging envelope full of newspaper articles that she thought would interest me, along with copies of "Hadassah" magazine and the annual City of Berlin calendar.

Rena had an amazing sense of timing. In the 1980s my freelance lifestyle allowed me to travel a month at a time. I would return from places like London, Australia, and Moscow and 15 minutes later the phone would ring. "Oh, hello, Mission2Moscow, I vas just going to liff a message for you," Rena would say in her thick German accent. I imagined she had been calling to "liff a message" every 15 minutes for several hours, waiting for me to pick up.

Once, a year into our relationship, I staggered home from a holiday office party with a few too many screwdrivers sloshing in my low-alcohol-tolerance bloodstream. The phone rang. "Hellllo, Mission2Moscow," she chirped.

"Hi, Rena, I just walked in the door and I think I'm going to be siiiick . . . " I said, and, indeed, I was. We chuckled about that for years.

She died on January 18, 1994, exactly six months shy of the birth of my son. I am bitterly disappointed that Rena, of all people, did not live to see that happy occasion.

I could say a lot more, and I will, later. Everybody should have a Morrie, a Rena, in their lives. They prepare us -- prepare me -- to be a Morrie or Rena to a generation not yet born.