A Man Makes His Mark

How will I make my mark on the world?

At one time or another, most people consider what history they will have left behind once they are no longer here. I want to be remembered for this... Or, I don't want to be remembered for that... But fifty, or a hundred years from now, what will a Google search say about me? Will Google even be the way in which I would retrieve the information I was looking for?

Last month, marked the 20th anniversary of my grandfather's death. He died at 84 years old, just four months before my wedding. Do the math, and you recognize he would have been 104 this past August. Sounds impossible. Impossible he was not alive for my wedding. Impossible he was not here for the birth and raising of my son. Impossible he's been gone for 20 years. Sometimes though, those who are no longer here reach out to you to remind you they are always in your heart. 

Call it a random moment or a strange coincidence, but last month was also the culmination of some very stressful weeks at work. For the first time in years, I was having trouble sleeping at night. I would feel exhausted and get into bed, but then I would lie there trying to squeeze my eyes closed, trying to calm myself to sleep. I tossed and turned and for some reason, I started to think of my Zaza. (Zaza was my oldest cousin's mispronunciation of the Yiddish word Zaide, meaning grandpa. It stuck and all of us called him that.) At the time I had no idea why my mind was drawn to him. But I decided that night while lying there, when I awoke in the morning I would Google him. I knew he had done some pretty cool things (stayed tuned, I'm getting to all that), so I considered it a strong possibility he'd show up in a search, even though Google wasn't even on the map when he died. I was curious to see what the search would yield. Looking back at an email from the next morning I was able to date that night. I can see it was September 16th, just two days before the anniversary of my Zaza's death. Strange coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

***

When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Miami, I took a seminar course in Communications Studies. I tried to look back at the course catalog and determine what the name of the course was, but I graduated twenty years ago (another strange coincidence?) and I can't remember. The capstone project for the course was to do an ethnographic study. It's funny, I have such a better understanding now of qualitative research and what an ethnography really is. As an undergraduate project, I think our professor was really focusing on interpersonal communication skills, and how much you can learn from people by listening to them tell their stories. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would come to find great value in this type of research during my doctoral studies more than 15 years later. My research methodology was novice, but in truth, I'm not sure my professor was correct in calling it an ethnography. I think it was more like a narrative inquiry. Notwithstanding, the end result was something special.  

In the narrow view of a 21-year-old, who would have more stories to tell than an "old person?" Like most college students, I chose what I expected to be an easy road. I wanted convenience and easy access, so who better than a family member to be the subject of my study, right? Family member, senior citizen, and just down the road, I knew I would ask my Zaza. He was willing and able, and my Bubbie was thrilled at the notion of me spending multiple days with them, sitting around and visiting.   I will forever be grateful for making that decision just about a year before he would pass. The youngest grandchild of eight, I was the lucky one to get this once in a lifetime privilege of learning from the primary source, what my grandfather's place was in American history.

***

We started on a Saturday. Bubbie fixed us all something to eat, and then Zaza respectfully shooed her away so he could begin the storytelling. He sat in his La-Z-Boy, the same one he always sat in, greenish-yellow, seventies-style with the kick out foot rest. It was strategically placed in their small South Florida condo. It was on an angle so he could see my Bubbie in the kitchen to the left, and the TV on the wall unit in front of him, in their small cozy den. It was a small sony TV, even by 1990's standards. But the television was never the focal point of this home. Family was. And food. Feeling strange at first, talking to my grandfather like I was a reporter, I was awkward and unsure how to begin. We decided on the beginning, as we all know there's no better place to start.

It was magical. I had heard bits and pieces of so many stories over the years, from my mom and my aunt and uncle. But I was the youngest, so often "grown-up" talk happened when I was out of the room. Other times it happened, but I wasn't interested. On this day, I had my Zaza's undivided attention, and while he started to tell me the stories of his past, my Bubbie would interject with small details or dig out artifacts to accompany the stories.

My Zaza, Isador, was the oldest boy of four children. He, his 5 year old brother, and two older sisters were orphaned in 1923, when he was only 12-years-old. My great grandpa, Jacob, was a leather factory worker who died in a factory fire. His wife, my great grandmother, Mary, died a few months later. The story everyone told is she died of heartache, unable to go on once Jacob was killed. At just 12-years-old my grandfather became the man of the house, with two sisters and a baby brother to help support. He explained, it was decided at the temple he would have his Bar-Mitzvah a year early, to ritually symbolize this transition into adulthood. And with that my grandpa entered the adult world and never looked back. Just like his dad, he eventually found himself working in a leather factory. 

Here's where he starts making his mark. As a factory worker, young Isador became involved in the local union. Conditions for factory workers hadn't been very good, as he knew too well from the death of his father. So he chose to get involved, to speak up, and be a voice. I hadn't realized, as a Speech Communication major, how much I shared with him professionally. I was always comfortable speaking in front of groups, and perhaps my knack for public speaking came from my Zaza! Just look at him. My mom has told me how charismatic and handsome he was. People used to say he looked like actor, Robert Mitchum. And I can just imagine his young New England accent thrusting out words in defense of fair treatment for workers. I've romanticized it a bit like a good speech from JFK.

I sat in awe, listening to him tell story after story, with humble pride. Bubbie continued to fill in the stories of work with reminders of how all the ladies were after him. Sixty-two years my grandparents were married until Zaza died, and Bubbie still boasted of him as though she was a proud young bride. He became a union representative for the Fur and Leather Workers Union, held various offices in the union and eventually was elected to be the Regional Director of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union in Boston. One of my favorite stories was my Zaza's professional claim to fame. Having never completed his formal schooling due to the death of his parents, his proudest professional moment came in 1949 when he was asked to speak to students in The Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. You should have heard him. I can still see the look in his eyes. It was like he had arrived. It was pretty amazing for a man without a degree in business to be seen as expert enough to share his experiences with the students in an Ivy League school. And of course, Bubbie had the artifacts to prove it.

This is the article that appeared in the local newspaper to
announce my Zaza's address to the senior class at Dartmouth.

The program from when Zaza spoke at Dartmouth.

Check out the eighth name from the top on the right hand page. Yup, that's my Zaza.

My grandfather's career was amazing, and I found various articles online from newspapers allover North America. From local newspapers in Peabody, Massachusetts (where he lived) and other parts of new England, out to Texas, and all the way up to Ottawa, Canada, there were tons of reports of conventions where my Zaza spoke. Spend enough time on Google, and you can also find proceedings and publications of the labor boards and court dockets with his name. He truly has been a part of labor history. But the one thing I still have not been able to uncover, is an artifact from his most shocking story.

In the 1950's, during Cold War paranoia, one of the biggest targets by anti-communist Joseph McCarthy, was union activists. So, you guessed it, Zaza was accused of being a communist and was dragged into a hearing where he had to profess his allegiance to the United States, and convince the board he was not a communist. He said it was scary the way union members, especially those in the leadership positions, were being accused. You never knew if they were just going to arrest you right there. Fortunately, there was no aftermath in the lives of my grandparents from the hearing. Whoever needed to believe him apparently did, and he was left alone. It was scary, but it didn't keep him from continuing his work until he retired. He had quite a career. I learned so much about my grandfather during that time. Firsthand, from spending time with him and listening to his stories, I learned about his past which is really a part of my family history.

***

My Zaza, the retired union leader, was also a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and before he died, he was a great-grandfather too. He and my Bubbie represent to me, the epitome of lifelong love. I have so many amazing memories of my time with them. Like Zaza taking us all out for dinner on a weekend when he hit big at the race track. He loved to bet horses on Saturday. Like his whisper with the come hither finger when he was pulling a hidden candy treat out of the cabinet as though Bubbie didn't know it was in there (she always knew). Like the way he taught us how to play 10 card gin and cut peaches around the diameter and twist them in half to pull the pit out. The way he couldn't sit next to you without touching you and how he could never have enough love from his kids. As a retiree, a grandfather, he wasn't an extravagant man. He played golf a couple of times a week as long as he could, spent summers with my Bubbie up in New England until they got into their 80's, and drove the same brown Mercury sedan for as long as I can remember. He told Paul and me when we got engaged, never to buy anything we couldn't pay for in cash, and always loved and praised my Bubbie's cooking. But what I remember most, what I'll never let go of as long as I live, is what he used to say to Bubbie when all of us gathered as a family during the holidays. He'd say, "Look at this Esta (Esther with a Boston accent), we did all this."

And as proud as we all are of everything he accomplished, I think he'd say his family is the best mark he made on the world.

A 1960's photo of my Bubbie and Zaza.

Zaza with his first great grandchild,
my cousin Eric's daughter, Molly.

Celebration of one of Zaza's birthdays in the late 80's.

Me and my Zaza in at one of my cousin's wedding in the 80's.