Ex-con man traces journey from family to family
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, April 18, 2004
INDIANAPOLIS — Frank Abagnale, made famous by Steven Spielberg's movie, "Catch Me if You Can," started and ended his own version of his story with the importance of family.
He began by recalling the traumatic moment when he faced an agonizing question in divorce court at the tender age of 16.
Your parents are getting a divorce, he was told, only learning that fact at the moment he heard it. Which parent do you want to live with?
Abagnale, relating the story at the Expo 2004 show here hosted by the International Sleep Products Assn., said he fled the court and never saw his father again.
He quickly turned to crime to support his life on the run.
First it was bouncing checks. Then he explained how he finagled an airline pilot's uniform and a pilot's identification card, using the decals on a Pan Am model airplane to make his card look authentic.
Abagnale then began hopping planes to jet around the country. He was clever enough to avoid the airline he supposedly flew for. "I never flew on Pan Am," he said. "I flew on everyone else."
He also explained how he dodged questions from curious pilots about what type of airplane he was flying. "Whatever they flew, I didn't fly," he said.
Money-making years
In that two-year period, Abagnale "made a great deal of money," he said.
Next, he impersonated a pediatrician, an attorney, and donned a bank guard's uniform to steal bank deposits.
Abagnale didn't think the adventure would last. "I always knew I would be caught," he said. "I spent five years in some very horrible places."
While he was in jail he missed his father and wanted to tell him how much he loved him, he said. But he never got the chance. His father died in a fall at age 58.
Abagnale was released from prison on the condition he cooperate with authorities, which he has done for 30 years, working with the FBI and staying in touch with the agents who tracked him down.
He needed his father and his mother. "Divorce," he said, "is a very devastating thing to deal with for the rest of your life."
His father, he recalled, was a loving parent, who ended each day telling him: "I love you. I love you very much."
The rewards of family
Abagnale then shifted his focus, talking about his own family. "God gave me a wife and she gave me three children who changed my life," he said.
The love he has for his wife and family have sustained him, he said. "I have done nothing more rewarding than being a good husband, a good father and a great daddy," he said.
Abagnale said he had nothing to do with the making of Spielberg's movie and made no money from the film.
He said Spielberg "went out of his way not to glorify his character," and realized a key fact about him: He was just a kid when he turned to crime.
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