The husband of an 82-year-old West Village man who died weeks after a neighbor pushed him to the pavement for bumping into him says the clash put an end to a romance that spanned more than half a century.
Dean Conover Whetzel hit his head on the pavement after 79-year-old neighbor Dana Escoffier allegedly knocked him to the ground on Hudson St. near W. 10th St., just around the corner from the apartment building where both men lived, around 1:30 p.m. Oct. 11, cops said. Escoffier was arrested for assault and harassment after walking away from the sprawled-out victim.
“It’s just shattered my world,” said the victim’s husband, Rodger Kepler. “I can’t believe that he’s gone.”
Medics took Whetzel to Bellevue Hospital, where he lay comatose for nearly a month, his skull fractured and brain bleeding, before dying Nov. 5.
“52 years is a very long time to be with someone and then all of a sudden, just lose him like that,” said Kepler. “I had four weeks, but there was no response. He didn’t squeeze my hand. He wouldn’t respond to the doctors. Nothing, nothing.”
Kepler was 19 and already living in the West Village when he began dating then-32 Whetzel. But their budding romance appeared to die on the vine after Whetzel moved uptown and Kepler decided to end things with the man 13 years his senior.
But a chance encounter in Central Park shortly after the breakup rekindled a flame that would burn until Whetzel’s death more than half a century later, Kepler said.
“(A friend and I) were in the southeast corner of the Sheep Meadow. It was a cloudy day and there wasn’t one person in the Sheep Meadow,” said Kepler. “All of a sudden I saw a figure coming towards us and it was some guy walking his bicycle. It turned out to be Dean.
“Something had brought us together. He said, ‘Give me a call, if you like, if you want to see me.’ I came home that night and I thought, ‘What were the chances of meeting someone you just broke up with in the middle of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park?’ I called him and then we were together forever. We were never apart.”
Early in his career, Whetzel worked as an upscale fashion retailer, dressing stars including Sonny Bono, Cher, and John Lennon out of a Midtown storefront on 60th St. near Second Ave., Kepler said.
“He used to go to Milan and walk their fabrics through the factory and he’d come back with suits and shirts and silk pajamas,” Kepler said. “He had a very elite clientele.”
After losing his job in retail, Whetzel and Kepler went into business together, opening up Charles St. Laundromat in 1986 and attracted a similarly glamorous clientele.
“We had Cindy Crawford, we had Glenn Close, we had Charlie Rose, we had Bebe Neuwirth, we had Natalie Portman,” said Kepler. “It was extraordinary. Every day a new celebrity would walk in to drop their laundry off.”
Escoffier denied ever having met Whetzel in an interview with the Daily News earlier this week, despite living in adjoining buildings for decades. But Kepler said his husband used to wash the suspect’s clothes at the laundromat.
“Dana Escoffier, who’s the man that did it, was a customer,” said Kepler.
After Escoffier allegedly shoved Whetzel, a witness saw him standing over the victim. “I pushed him because he bumped into me,” Escoffier said as he walked away, according to the criminal complaint against him.
“The man who was pushed fell down to the ground and the other guy started walking away,“ said Ethan Dank, 25, who was waiting tables at Cowgirl NYC when the incident occured outside. “People surrounded the guy on the ground, trying to help.”
When police called Kepler, an officer told him their dog, Buddy was with Whetzel when he was pushed and had stayed by his master’s side.
“When the ambulance came, Buddy tried to get into the ambulance with him and the police picked him up, took him up to the precinct,” Kepler said. “I had to come up and get the dog. So I did, brought him home and then I went to the hospital.”
At Bellevue Hospital, Whetzel and lay in a coma unresponsive.
“They sedated him and he laid there for four weeks. Never responded, never came to his senses. I went every day to see him, talk to him,” Kepler said.
“He didn’t want to be artificially kept alive. They took him off his life support. He died three days later.”
Escoffier was released without bail following his Oct. 12 arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. He pleaded not guilty.
No mention was made of the victim’s death at a follow up court hearing on Escoffier’s case on Thursday and it remains unclear if the Manhattan DA’s office will pursue any upgraded charges against the defendant.
“We learned that the victim passed away,” Escoffier’s lawyer, Omar Fortune, told the Daily News Thursday. “Mr. Escoffier is entitled to the presumption of innocence and we’d ask all New Yorkers to afford him that presumption.”
With Julian Roberts-Grmela
