60 Time November 30/December 7, 2020
When they arrive at the empty grave, the work-ers from HFBA slowly lower Torron inside. Plafker,
dressed in a cream-colored panama hat and gray
suit jacket, opens a prayer book and begins reciting
prayers in Yiddish:
Go in peace, rest in peace and arise to your lot atthe end of days
May the omnipresent console you among the othermourners of Zion and Jerusalem
May they blossom forth from the city like grass ofthe earth
Remember that we are but dustHe throws a shovelful of soil into the grave. Itlands on Torron’s coffin with a thump.
About A month after Torron
was finally put to rest, Rhoda
Fairman, 83, was at her West Vil-
lage apartment when she spotted
something on her kitchen table
that took her breath away. A bro-
chure from HFBA was open and
facing up. Within the leaflet were
the names of the 333 people the
association had buried through
the first six months of the year.
“It’s the way it fell on my table—
second page up—that I was able to
see Ellen’s name,” she says.
The two women had workedtogether for more two decades as
legal secretaries at the high-powered Milberg law
firm in Manhattan in the 1990s and 2000s but
had fallen out of touch. Most of the other 20 or
so secretaries from the firm had kept tabs on one
another over the years through Facebook. Torron,
however, never created an account. Fairman always
wondered what had happened to her.
Not many people managed to get close to Torron,but Fairman did. They’d share lunch breaks, go out
shopping or schedule occasional museum outings.
They were together on 9/11 when they witnessed the
second plane hit the south tower from the 49th-floor
office of One Penn Plaza.
Torron was born in Manhattan on Jan. 19, 1946,the only child of Polish and Lithuanian immigrants.
She had lived on her own since she was 18 years old,
and in her 40s, she put herself through school, at-
tending Hunter College and graduating in 1988
with a double major in English and classical stud-
ies. Fairman says Torron was the sort of woman
who should’ve been born in another era because
she’d likely have been a lawyer herself. “She was a
victim of the times, honey,” she says.
As far as Fairman or anyone knew, Torron nevermarried. She claimed to have a daughter who lived in
Brazil, but no one in the office ever met her or even
saw a picture. “Ellen was a bit of a mystery,” says
Sanford Dumain, a lawyer for whom Torron worked
for more than two decades, until her retirement in- “I thought she might’ve been a Russian spy.”
He was only half joking. Torron was seen as
something of a loner around the office but also
known to be intelligent and well traveled—though
she also traveled alone. TIME joined Queens
County public administrator investigators when
they visited her unit in July. Amid the disorder, her
bookcases were tidy and lined with shelf after shelf
of language and travel books.
These items were of little interest to the two men
hunting for clues on settling Torron’s estate. To
them, finding a will was more valuable than finding
a suitcase of cash. Yet no will turned
up. They resorted to requesting that
the post office forward her mail, but
nothing significant came in eight
months. Torron received 401(k)
returns, bank statements, a lot of
junk mail, but not a single letter from
family or friends. Nor was there a
sign she had a daughter, despite
what she had told co-workers.
Investigators did discover that
Torron had a total of $56,148.85 in
two Chase banking accounts and
an estimated $2,560 worth of jew-
elry, including a pearl necklace,
silver brooches and ruby- diamond
earrings. By law, the Queens County
public administrator’s office must attempt to track
down next of kin to distribute the estate. The only
family that the public administrator has identified
thus far are several first cousins once removed, the
furthest relatives eligible to lay claim to an estate.
One of those cousins is Meryle Mishkin-Tank, a
56-year-old paralegal who lives in the San Francisco
area. Not only has Mishkin-Tank never met Torron—
she didn’t even know she existed. Now most days
after work and on weekends, she’s trying to uncover
details about Torron’s life and death. She’s learned
of—and contacted—five new cousins and an aunt
through genealogy research. “It doesn’t sound like
any of the cousins knew anything about Ellen,” she
says. “It’s just sad.”
Though she grew up in Manhattan, Mishkin-
Tank didn’t know much about Hart Island or
Mount Richmond Cemetery, where Torron was
buried in June. Through her research, however,
she found that Torron’s paternal grandfather,
Zelman, and grandmother and likely namesake,
Elka, are also buried at Mount Richmond. In fact,
their graves are located a short walk away from
their granddaughter’s plot. —With reporting by
currie engel/new york
Nation
^
Torron, then 18
(bottom row
center), seated
next to her
father Benjamin
at a cousin’s
bar mitzvah in
1964; her family
discovered the
photo after
being contacted
by TIME