FEATURED JOBS
Comments (1)Bob Frankel knew he had to do something.
Especially after he saw two of the white vans vandalized recently with black spray painted swastikas.
So, Mr. Frankel, the owner of the Frankel Automotive Group, reached out to the victims of the vandalism, offering to remove the paint and restore their vehicles to the condition they were in prior to the damage done.
“I want to make people feel whole again,” he said. “When I looked at two of the vans, it was chilling. I wanted to do something.”
Mr. Frankel also said he is no stranger, himself, to this sort of hate crime.
Just days after purchasing his property in 1988 for Frankel Acura in Cockeysville, he received his own confrontation with evil.
An envelope was delivered, and inside he found a bagel with a note saying, “go back to Pikesville and eat your bagel.”
The letter was among at least three others of a similar anti-Semitic nature he received.
He would soon learn that the source of the hate came from a nearby neighborhood.
His solution?
Mr. Frankel bought land near the neighborhood. And the street name for the land? Frankel Way.
“When these people left and returned home every day, they’d have to see me in print.
“I met evil head on,” he continued. “And it really rocked me that there are people out there like this who hate.”
As a high school baseball player for Park School, he can remember when playing in certain parts of the region, having anti-Semitic remarks hurled his way, not to mention bagels or even batteries.
“We were called bagel eaters once,” he remembered, “People did imitations of us having horns.”
“Helping out with this situation is something I wanted to do,” he said. “This thing bothered me. When I heard that one family walked out of their door and the little kids saw it, it just got to me. I was deeply bothered by it.”
The vehicle owners have already been contacted and put in touch with Mr. Frankel.
“I will completely take care of their vehicles fully without any charge,” he said, “this struck a raw nerve for me.”