My Roosevelt memory...circa 1965...
My late father was a World War II veteran who worked days for the
Vets Admin in lower Manhattan and nights in the theater district.
About a week before Thanksgiving, 1965, my father was run over by a
car while buying a newspaper at one of those green metal newstands in
lower Manhattan on his way to work at the VA. He was dragged for a
couple of blocks underneath the vehicle before finally becoming
dislodged from the undercarriage. He sustained multiple broken bones,
damage to every major body organ and extensive skin loss on both
hands and one leg. He remained conscious, broken and bleeding, saying
only, "I tried to keep my head up so I wouldn't have brain damage."
He asked someone to call for the VA ambulance and was advised there
was a minimum 4 hour wait. He would have bled to death. He then asked
someone to call a private ambulance and he was whisked away to St.
Vincent's Hospital, near death. For more than a month he hovered
between life and death. Every day the Doctors said, "Prepare
yourself. He is going to die."
In 1965, we didn't have terms like "physically challenged"
and "handicapped". You were "crippled" and doors across the country
slammed shut in your face. My father feared most of all for the
welfare of his young wife and 2 children (I had just turned eight). A
group of cutthroat neighbors came to our door one evening and
offered "to buy the house real cheap." My mother shut the door and
said nothing. My maternal grandmother came down from Batavia, NY, and
was so traumatized she returned home and promptly collapsed from a
stroke.
And soon my favorite cousin would ship off to Vietnam and be murdered
in an ambush which claimed the lives of two entire platoons. I
suppose things could have gotten worse, but I really wasn't sure
how...

My father had met Mr. George Morton Levy in the late 1940's and
enjoyed a warm but intermittent collegiality with him through various
special events over the years. When the great Philanthropist and
Humanitarian, Mr. Levy, learned of my father's plight, he sprang into
action.
He dispatched a mutual friend and colleague to my father's bedside to
assure him that 1) he was going to live and 2) he had a lifetime job
waiting for him out at Roosevelt Raceway when he was well enough to
get out there. At the lowest point in my father's and family's
history, Mr. Levy gave us hope of a productive and positive future.
My father progressed slowly from traction to a wheelchair to a walker
to crutches to a cane. He endured many subsequent medical and
surgical crises which necessitated further hospitalizations. Yet, as
soon as he could walk and drive, he indeed went out to Roosevelt
Raceway and continued to work there until his 70th birthday, at which
point his health was seriously failing and his condition became
terminal. My father passed away only a few months after Roosevelt
Raceway closed forever. While he had suffered from prostate cancer
which spread to his bones, liver and neurological system, it was
heart failure that finished him. I will always believe the heart
failure stemmed in no small part from the closure of his beloved
Roosevelt Raceway, where patrons and staff alike came together like a
band of brothers united under the Wise and Kind Mentorship of George
Morton Levy.

I was recently blessed to share this story with Mr. Levy's beloved
daughter, and I am now posting this to share with other Roosevelt
devotees who may enjoy reading this and might even remember a large,
limping Irishman named Bob who worked the gates out there for almost
twenty years.