Mystery of Mort Solved!

Took a full day but a reader has stepped forward to identify the stranger with a nice head of hair and a dark tie whose picture was slapped on Mort Levy's death notice.

Frances Malamed called after reading my column on Mort and his singular death notice, 264 hand-crafted words about his life and times, that we screwed up by topping with a picture of the wrong man.

Mort was bald and casually dressed. This gentleman was neither.

Turns out he was some other Levy -- Dr. Leon Levy, a periodontist from Wilmington, Del., who passed away in January.

Mrs. Malamed knew the family. Nice family. "That's Leon," she said. So I checked.

Mystery solved, especially for Julie Hirsch Waxman, Mort's life-partner of 26 years, who picked up the paper last weekend to admire Mort's careful words and was disturbed to find the photo of a stranger. With hair. And a tie.

This is Dr. Levy's picture here. A little different than this one.