Thursday, December 8th, 2011

It was 31  years ago today that John Lennon was gunned down in front of the Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side.

There are countless tributes all over the internet, but @ReporterLeslie has a decidedly local story today: she managed to catch up with Lennon’s former optometrist, Dr. Gary Tracy.

You can read the full story on DNAinfo.com.

What was going through Dr. Tracy’s head when Lennon and wife Yoko Ono first walked into his office in 1975?

“I remember my heart pounding while thinking, ‘I’d better get this prescription right!’”

Dr. Tracy had an office at Columbus & 73rd in the 1970s, just a stone’s throw from Lennon’s home at the Dakota, and fitted him “for at least a dozen pairs of his trademark wireframe glasses during the last four years of the musician’s life,” according to the article.

35+ years later, he still works in the neighborhood — his current office located at 351 Amsterdam (between 76h & 77th).

As impressive as that longevity is, Dr. Tracy is still about 75 years behind his local business neighbor located one block north — Beacon Paint & Hardware has been at 371 Amsterdam since 1900!

Filed under: Celebrities, Events, Manhattan, New York City, News, NYC, Upper West Side, Upper West Side Blog, UWS 1 Comment »
Tags: celeb, celebrity, Dr. Gary Tracy, Gary Tracy, John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, New York City, NYC, optometrist, The Dakota, Upper West Side, UWS, Yoko Ono