Gary Frenkel

My wife Candy and I own and operate Midwest Refineries, buyers and refiners of gold, silver and platinum scrap. Our Daughter Joanna and Son-In-Law Raul are also active in our business. Our oldest Son Marty is an attorney. I am a classic car lover and own several collector cars which I enjoy taking to car shows and driving. One of my cars, a 1957 Chevy convertible, was restored for Candy to drive. I'm addicted to Model T Fords and have owned 8 of them in the last 10 years. In Sept. of 1960, after graduation from Mumford, I bought a 1959 Buick LeSabre Convertible. In 1972 I put it in a building my friend Mitchel Abrams owned, where it slept until 1994. The car was finally restored completely in 2006 and won a Best Of Show award at the Phoenix Center in downtown Pontiac, during the Woodward Dream Cruise in 2006. She is my favorate car of all the hundreds I have owned in the last 50 years. The newest additions to my collection are 2 1910 Buicks, which are brass era cars.

When I turned 16, my Dad bought me my first car, a 1949 Pontiac 4 door fastback. Even though it was 9 years old and some guys in Mumford had much cooler cars, I was thrilled to have a car of my own. When the car began to have rust holes appear, I patched them up with bondo and painted the car with green house paint, with a brush. It shined pretty good for using a brush. I added yellow and red flames on the hood, also with a paint brush. I thought it looked very cool. A year later, on a hot Summer day, my friend from Mumford, Terry Rosen came over. I told him I wished I had a convertible, especially on a day like today. That was just a pipe dream, as I didn't have any money. All of a sudden BONG, the idea hit me like a ton of bricks. Why not make my 49 Pontiac 4 Door into a convertible? I went into my Dad's garage and found a chisle, a hacksaw and a hammer. I started my first custom car project and 3 hours later, I had the only 1949 Pontiac 4 Door convertible in the world. I couldn't stop staring at her. She was beautiful, even with her jagged metal incisions. I backed her into the garage and continued to look at my creation for awhile. A couple of hours went by and my Dad came home from work. I told him I wanted to show him something in the garage. I pulled up to open the garage door (pre electric) and my Dad looked at my car and at that precise moment in time, within 2 seconds of each other, both rear doors of my car, fell to the ground. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was in shock. My Dad just shook his head and told me I just ruined a perfectly good automoblile. I didn't realize the lower rocker panels were so rusted, so when I hacksawed through the center posts of the body, the rear doors had no support. I picked them up and roped them shut, drove to the corner gas station and had the rear doors welded shut. Drove her the whole summer, my Pontiac 4 Dr. convertible. This car was the start of my car crazy addiction, which exists to this day.