Affable 71-Year-Old Doctor Keeps Tuned for Adventure

In front of the rambling Brea home of Dr. Frank Haigler stands an old British telephone booth. When Haigler found out they were being removed from the streets of London, he commissioned a British friend to buy him one for $450. He considered that a bargain until the phone booth arrived with freight charges of about $1,000. By the time Haigler sandblasted the years of accumulated crud off the phone booth and spruced it up, the cost had escalated to about $2,000.

But Haigler, true to form, found a bonus in all this unexpected expense. In cleaning out the interior of the phone booth, he found a note from a woman offering “expert massages” to “tired businessmen.”

So Haigler phoned her. She said she was, indeed, still in business and would be glad to accommodate him. She was somewhat startled--and more than a little flattered--to find he was calling from California. So to show her pleasure, she promised Haigler a free massage the next time he’s in London. And he may very well take her up on it. Frank Haigler gets around.

He got around to serving briefly in the Israeli army early this year, which was the reason I stopped by to see him. Not a large number of 71-year-old non-Jewish physicians choose to spend three weeks of their lives unpacking crates on an Israeli army base. Haigler did, and he calls the experience “fantastic.”

It all came about through an organization called “Volunteers for Israel,” started six years ago to provide volunteers from all over the world to take over menial tasks for the Israeli army and thus free its soldiers for more important assignments. Over those years, 20,000 people have thus given of their time and energy.

Haigler stresses that it’s no vacation. He had to pay his own air fare (half-price under a special arrangement), and accommodations were in army barracks. The army food was “lousy,” he said. And the weather was “mostly cold and miserable.”

“But,” says Haigler, “the enthusiasm throughout the country was infectious. Israel is a paradox. Basically, it’s a peace-loving nation. Its people are hard-working, industrious and very bright. They are spontaneous, emotional, friendly and courteous--not aggressive or hostile.

“Yet, Israel is an armed camp. Many of the young people, both men and women, are heavily armed and in uniform. You see them everywhere with submachine guns slung over their shoulders. But nowhere did I ever witness any boisterous behavior or aggressive machoism.”

Haigler learned about “Volunteers for Israel” through a fellow member of the Los Angeles Adventurers Club, of which he has been a member many years. “I’d traveled all over the world,” he said, “but never to the Middle East. So I signed up.”

He went with the biggest contingent in Volunteer history, 2,000 people who embarked for Israel last New Year’s Day, virtually all of them Jews wanting to contribute in some tangible way to Israel. Haigler didn’t tell them that he was a physician “because I didn’t want to end up emptying bedpans in some hospital.” Instead, he ended up in a dismal munitions depot near the Golan Heights opening crates of machine guns and meticulously pounding out the nails. (“They don’t waste anything in Israel,” he explained.)

He saved an inspection report from one of the crates, and, typical of this gregarious man, called the inspector when he got back home. “Those guns,” said Haigler, “had been packed in 1978 and had apparently been in storage ever since. I thought the inspector would be interested in knowing what happened to them, and he was. It hit me over and over that the Israelis are paying full cost for old--sometimes very old--surplus war material.”

On weekends, tours were provided for the volunteers, including a visit to Jerusalem. Volunteers were not allowed to wear their Army uniforms off the base, but Haigler did meet some tank officers who told him that he was working with “the dregs of the Army,” and they wished he could see it at its best.

Even so, Haigler came back with totally affirmative feelings about Israel. “I went over there,” he said, “knowing very little about Israel and with no fixed political views. I came home impressed at the tremendous value we get from our investment in Israel. An armed and strong Israel keeps the peace in the Middle East. And the strongest impression I brought back was of a proud, intelligent and hard-working people who have converted a barren desert into a beautiful nation.”

Haigler expressed these thoughts as we wandered about his property examining an astonishing collection of military artifacts. The Israeli adventure is only a small corner of the Haigler persona. The British phone booth out front probably better represents the delight and curiosity with which this semiretired Orange County obstetrician and gynecologist approaches life. Among many other things, his back yard houses a World War I tank, a whole range of German motorcycles and sidecars from World War II, a British taxicab, his deceased mother’s vintage Cadillac, three old mint-condition Mercedes-Benz roadsters--and a shiny Honda motorcycle with sidecar which his wife has forbidden him to drive since one of their dogs, who always rode in the sidecar, went through the windshield after a sudden stop.

Recently removed from the back yard is a Sherman tank, which, Haigler said, almost gave his wife a heart attack when he bought it for $5,000 at an auction at MGM Studios. “It turned out to be a great investment,” he said. “I rented it to movie makers over the years for $30,000 and sold it the other day for $40,000.”

Haigler’s basement is a museum housing artifacts that range from his great grandfather’s Civil War sword to a Sperry bomb sight. There’s a sword he retrieved from a dead Japanese officer in a cave on Okinawa when he was a Marine infantry captain during World II. And an envelope containing a small Japanese flag that the same officer was wearing for a bandage. Haigler had an agreement with the fellow Marine who took the flag: whoever died first would send the sword or the flag to the other. When the flag arrived in the mail from his friend’s son, Haigler found it difficult to open the envelope. He still does.

When Haigler was packing to go to Israel, he was told to bring some heavy work socks. He had none but remembered that he had packed a half-dozen pair away in his old Marine footlocker. So he opened it up and found the socks--wrapped in a 1945 copy of the society page of the New York Times. Haigler’s curiosity led him to examine the paper and discover that it described the wedding on Long Island of a man named Francis J. Garvin.

So naturally--45 years later--Haigler phoned him. Garvin still lives on Long Island and was so delighted with the call he invited Haigler for dinner. He plans to go--en route to London for that free massage.