Frank's memories of Jan in the Sixties.

Frank is currently an artist, teacher and social worker in New York.

The first thing that struck Marie and I when we met Frank was his remarkable resemblance to Jack Kerouac as he looked in his thirties. Frank laughed, because as he said, this was the thing that caused Jan's mother to like him, and Jan's mother liking him was the thing that drove them apart. "She really wanted a guy her mother hated".

FRANK'S PAGE at Absolute Arts
http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/f/fshifreen/
Frank Shifreen and Jan Kerouac were lovers when she was 13 and he was 16. The best accounts of Jan's early years is in her own novels, "Baby Driver" and "Trainsong". Like her father, she was born to adventure, born to live in the wild heart of life.

I met Frank Shifreen purely by accident. I was in Tompkins Park in New York City one warm Monday afternoon, filming people sunning themselves, playing chess, nothing special.

I was in the park because this was a favorite hangout of Jan Kerouac when she was a child and teenager. Jan grew up a few streets away, in the Lower East Side. I spotted a guy who looked like he might be a Beat or a Hippy and just walked up to him and said "Did you ever know someone named Jan Kerouac?" To my absolute amazement he replied "Yeah, I knew her but it was some years ago". In my interview with Nico he revealed that although he knew Jan he had a friend who had had a teenage relationship with her. He gave us the guy's phone number and the guy was Frank Shifreen.