Search for Closemouthed Man’s Heir Leads to Irvine

The missing heir of a machinist and ace trapshooter has been found in Irvine, thanks to a relative in Phoenix.

The heir’s aunt read a June 22 story in the Arizona Republic that described the mystery surrounding a will left by David Frank, an inventive machinist and top shooter who lived in Palm Desert, near Palm Springs.

Frank was so closemouthed that even his closest friends and relatives didn’t know until a few years before his death that he had a son.

When Frank finally mentioned the son, he passed along erroneous information that later hampered the search for him.

Frank died of lung cancer in October after managing to blur even the truth about his age. He was either 80 or 82 when he died.

On a visit here in February, 1984, Frank disappeared for a day, then returned to say he had found his son.

That was one of the few times he mentioned his son to anyone, but his will left one-third of his estate, about $60,000, to “Mr. Thomas Frank, last known address, Anaheim, Calif.”

Beverly Cone, a retired budget administrator for the Phoenix Finance Department, saw a story about the search and realized that her sister, Helen Henderson of Long Beach, was the mother of Frank’s son.

The son turned out to be Tom Henderson, 44, vice president of Rogerson Aircraft Corp. in Irvine. He had legally changed his surname to that of his stepfather.

Frank, it turned out, had met Helen Huhn when he ran a machine shop on Central Avenue in Phoenix and had married her after both moved to California.

They had a son, Thomas Dave Frank, before she divorced him and took custody of the child. Two years later, Frank married another woman, while his former wife married Ralph Henderson and lost touch with Frank.