Great Neck twins, 85, recall upbringing

Twins George and Lenny Motchkavitz, now 85, recall their younger years, taking care of farm animals and tending to chrysanthemums at a farmhouse down the street from a home in Great Neck their father built almost 90 years ago.

“Middle Neck Road was a two-lane road with small stores on both sides,” said Lenny Motchkavitz, who now lives in Ocala, Fla., and just completed a two-week visit. “I remember that there was one funeral director and across the street from him on North Road was a drugstore. You wouldn’t go to the doctors, you’d go there with any ailment you had and he would fix you up.”

When the twins were young, they would take their lunch break at St. Aloysius Catholic School, to bring water to the cows at the farmhouse on their block and then run back to school.

They grew up among nine other children in a house their father John Motchkavitz built at 8 Elm Place in Great Neck in 1925. Their father fled Poland when he was 17 so he wouldn’t be drafted into the Russian Army. He moved to Brooklyn and later started his family in Great Neck in 1920.

“Their whole life they basically ate breakfast and lunch together,” said George’s son, John Motchkavitz, 44, of Great Neck. “They also had their own business together called M and P Plumbing and Heating for 40 years.”

The twins joined the Navy at age 17 and were assigned to Waldron Field, a landing airfield in Corpus Christi, Texas, for guard detail defending merchant ships during World War II.  When they returned home they joined the Alert Fire Company in 1946 at age 19.

George, who still lives in Great Neck, recalls the good ol’ days when he and his brother would drive the hook-and-ladder truck, which had a turntable ladder and required two drivers with separate steering wheels to steer the front and rear wheels of the engine.

“When we heard sirens, we would run at the end of the block toward the firehouse and the truck would just pick us up on the way,” George Motchkavitz said.

Lenny Motchkavitz remembers a tragic experience in 1967 when he was fire chief at Great Neck Alert Fire Co. 1. He and his brother responded to a fire that engulfed a home on Potters Lane, which they couldn’t put out in time to save a mother, father and daughter.

George Motchkavitz teared up just thinking about it.

“When we finally got in there we found the daughter lying on the bed and we could tell that she was trying to wake up her parents,” he said. “Those people didn’t have a chance. There was nothing we could do.”

But that tragedy didn’t stop a tradition of the family serving. George’s son, John Motchkavitz, volunteers with the fire department when not teaching religion at St. Aloysius Catholic School on Great Neck Road and serving as chairman of business and technology at Great Neck South High School.

A phone rang and both George and Lenny reached into their pockets, pulled out their cellphones and put to their ears. The twins, who act very much the same, recall spending most of their lives together doing many of the same things and plan to continue the tradition with frequent visits.

“I told my sister, ‘I’m never going to die because look at the things I’m gonna miss,” Lenny said. “She said I was crazy, but I don’t want to miss a thing.”

Above: From left, twins George and Lenny Motchkavitz, 85, recall what it was like growing up in Great Neck. (Aug. 28, 2012)