Zeidy was a loyal sidekick to his wife. He did what he was told, spoke when given permission and deferred to the women around him. He was a short man with diabetes, and he was always overweight in a roly-poly, almost jolly, sort of way. I remember many times seeing him or hearing of him poking around in the refrigerator late at night, hoping to sneak out some contraband food when no one (specifically Bubby) was around. In his older years, he worked as a stock boy for Rodman’s, a local Washington, DC-area drugstore chain. Truth be told, he didn’t make much of himself professionally. His English was never very good, and his accent was strong. None of this seemed to matter much to him or others, though, and he was the most dear, sweet man who could
converse with anyone, anywhere.
I cannot tell you how many men and women from the DC-area suburbs we lived in remember, to this day, talking with Sol Dash by the vending machines at the JCC ( Jewish Community Center) in Rockville, Maryland, where Bubby would send him to exercise in the pool. However, Zeidy didn’t like to exercise. Instead, he would go to the JCC as expected, water down his swimming trunks in the men’s restroom and spend the entirety of his time there sitting in the vending machine room, enjoying snacks and figuring out which young boys and girls (and later young men and women) went to the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School across the street and of those, who knew my sister, Erica, or me. Once he’d determined who knew us (and if they didn’t, who should know us), he would share all sorts of detailed stories about his family history and his experience as a Holocaust survivor. While this may sound as if it were a strange or inappropriate topic of discussion, his delivery and his overall
energy were so endearing and so tender that he, without exception, made friends and fans for life every time he started up a new conversation. And of course, after enough time had passed, Zeidy—now happily satiated with snacks and with his wet bathing suit in a bag—would return home to Bubby, who for many years had no reason to believe that he wasn’t logging in lots of swimming hours.
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