I saw Hy at the drugstore, where he worked part-time as a pharmacist.\u00a0 He was about 85 at the time. Hy said all his friends were dead.\u00a0 (My dad, Toby, had been dead about 25 years.)<\/p>\n
I ran into John Kelly, who worked with my dad 30-some years ago at the key company.\u00a0 John said one of the \u201cbig bosses\u2019\u201d had slept overnight in the key-company office because he had marital problems. This big boss, Sid, had a slew of problems.\u00a0 His kids were \u201creal hippies,\u201d said John. Sid was a loud-mouth, know-it-all, country-club Jew from Shaker Heights, I remember my dad saying. Toby liked to kvetch about Sid almost nightly at dinnertime.<\/p>\n
My dad<\/strong><\/span> disliked most \u201cbig bosses.\u201d Who didn\u2019t. One \u201cbig boss\u201d my dad tolerated, luckily, was the key company president, Manny Schor, who was a World Federalist, very intelligent and not a show off.<\/p>\n So could I.<\/p>\n Why were<\/strong><\/span> these old guys still alive and my dad dead?\u00a0 That’s what I\u00a0 wanted to know. My dad’s long game wasn’t so great.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n Where are they now: \u201cAnything within 10 feet of the cup, Toby sank,\u201d said Hy Birnbaum, a friend of my late father. I saw Hy at the drugstore, where he worked part-time as a pharmacist.\u00a0 He was about 85 at the time. Hy said all his friends were dead.\u00a0 (My dad, Toby, had been dead about 25 years.) I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16599"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16799,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599\/revisions\/16799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/jewish-key-114x300.jpg\" "\\"jewish")
Manny came to my gigs occasionally in later years.\u00a0 (Most of the big bosses at the key company were Jewish.\u00a0 The company was owned by a Jew.) Manny said, \u201cI can still picture your father sitting at his desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nToby Stratton\u00a0 1917 – 1986
\nSid\u00a0 1921 – 2000
\nManny Schor\u00a0 1918 – 2009
\nJohn Kelly\u00a0 1931 – 2011
\nHy Birnbaum\u00a0 1925 –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"