A Treasured Memento of the Timeless Gift of Friendship
I suppose Alan Menkes’ story could be dismissed as nothing more than that of a guy who wants his stolen watch back. Even Menkes concedes it’s a cheap watch, one that he doesn’t wear and that probably costs no more than 10 or 20 bucks, tops.
And yet, why would he go to the trouble to tell the tale in a diary he was keeping for his unborn daughter? Why, in the midst of momentous entries about world events and her parents’ exultant anticipation of her birth, would he digress and tell her a story about an ordinary watch with a brown leather strap?
It’s best to let the diary speak for itself.
Menkes, a 51-year-old physician who retired in 1990 as the result of injuries from a car accident and now lives in Laguna Beach, writes in his diary that the story starts in 1983 at George Air Force Base in Victorville, shortly after Menkes joined the reserves. One Saturday afternoon, Menkes was at the base tailor shop for alterations to his ill-fitting uniform. The tailor, he explains, was a man named Mark Alexander.
The sergeant accompanying Menkes bluntly told the tailor the uniform was needed the next day. Pushing it back across the counter, the tailor said that was impossible. Two weeks, maybe.
“As he was pushing my uniform back to the sergeant, I noticed not only his foreign accent but a tattoo of several numbers burned into his left forearm, a pale blue coloring of the digits,” Menkes writes. “I stepped up to the counter and spoke in Yiddish. His little dark eyes sparkled and moistened as he said back to me in Yiddish, ‘Please follow me.’ “He stopped all his other work, took me into the fitting room and pinned my new uniform. When we came out from behind the dressing room curtains, he said loudly enough for all, including the pushy sergeant, to hear, ‘Colonel, please come back in an hour and I will have the uniform pressed and waiting.’ ”
From there, the doctor and the tailor of limited financial resources struck up a friendship that continued after Menkes’ reserve stint. Although Menkes’ practice was 80 miles away, Alexander became his patient. “I never charged him a fee for my services,” he writes. “His wife would cook special meals for him to take to my office, since I wouldn’t take money and they were very proud people. I knew he couldn’t afford the gas and wear-and-tear on his car to drive 160 miles each monthly visit, but he insisted. He would alter clothes for me in the office. He also told me about his life in the Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust of World War II.”
The tailor told Menkes of being taken away as a young teen. He had been at the camp for 90 days, Menkes relates in his diary, when the commandant told him he would personally shoot him the next day.
“Alexander said he was still able to sleep that night because his whole family was already murdered and he had nothing to live for that he could see,” Menkes writes. The next day, according to the tailor’s story, his “execution” was thwarted when Allied forces reached the camp.
Oh, yes, the watch.
“Anyway, back to the issue of the watch,” Menkes writes in the diary. “Alexander bought it for me for my retirement, even though I knew he couldn’t afford it. He said it was to always remember him. It was not very expensive but obviously very priceless.”
Eight days ago, the watch was stolen from a shelf next to Menkes’ exercise machine. Menkes used the watch to time his workouts, and he told police he suspects it was taken by one of the men doing temporary work at his home. Police later confronted the man, but he denied knowledge of it.
Menkes hopes the word about the watch’s sentimental value somehow gets to whoever is the thief. He said he’ll offer the watch’s value in cash if it’s returned.
In the diary, Menkes ended the story this way: “There is no way to replace the watch. The only other treasure of his memory I will also always have is you, my darling. Your first birth name is Alexandra, in honor of Mark. I hope you are as proud of that as I.”
A week ago today--the day after that entry--Menkes and his wife, Laura, welcomed 7-pound, 6-ounce Alexandra Holden Menkes into the world. Alexandra had been the name Laura favored, not realizing why her husband so willingly agreed to it.
Why did you tell the story of the watch, I asked Menkes this week. Partly, he said, as a way for his daughter to learn someday about her Jewish heritage. Mostly, he said, it was because Alexander “was the sweetest, kindest man I ever met and who never had a bad word to say about anybody. That’s the kind of person I’d like her to be.”
I asked Menkes if he has any hope of seeing the watch again.
“I know I’m going to get it back,” he said Thursday morning, holding his week-old daughter. “I really have that feeling.”
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.
