Jacob (Jack) Azaroff

Jacob, better known as Jack, worked from age 13 until age 76. Seven days a week didn't faze him. He owned deli/grocery stores in Hackensack, Elizabeth, Union, and Irvington, N.J., at one time or another. He died four days shy of his 90th birthday. His footstone reads "reliable, hardworking, straightforward." His father Louis died in1922, age 42. Jack was 17 years old, was working for the A&P, and had four younger siblings, Sadie, Dave, Etta and Joe. Their mother was pregnant. She gave birth later to a son, Louis, named for his father. Little Louis died tragically at age 4 when he was hit by a vehicle while crossing a street in Lima, Ohio, where had mother, Ida, had moved, with her younger children, to marry a cousin named Tinianow. Until Ida moved, Jack supported the family. They also took in a boarder, Bill Sanders, who later married Sadie Azaroff> They had four children. Jack would talk about his father Louis, who delivered bread for a bakery on New York's Lower East Side, using a horse and wagon. One horse was named Larry. After Larry it was Billy. Jack accompanied his father on many occasions. Jack said the horses knew the routes and knew the stores. They didn't have to hear "Whoa to know when to stop, Jack would recall, chuckling. Jack liked to watch soccer games on Sunday afternoons. He'd go with his favorite cousins, Dave and Sam Smagorinsky. And he loved their parents, Dina and Nathan. When he visited them years later it gave Jack the opportunity to once again speak Yiddish, which he enjoyed. Jack liked to visit relatives on Sunday afternoons. He had no car until 1946. Until then buses and subways were the way to go. His first car was a 1936 Buick. It was sitting with a For Sale sign on it. Jack paid $800 along with a stipulation that the gas station owner teach him how to drive. A year later Jack bought a new 1947 DeSoto, then a '49 Desoto, a 1952 Desoto, a '55 Desoto, and then switched to a 1961 Buick LeSabre. After that it was second-hand cars. WJack married Florence Claire Sehres in 1929. They had two children, Lewis and Frances, Lewis in 1931, Frances in 1951. Why the 20-year gap? Who knows? Jack and Florence started their married life in Brooklyn on West Fourth Street. Three years. Then three years in Queens. In l936 they moved to Hackensack. Jack bought a partnership in a small grocery store on Main Street. A year later he bought out the partner for $500. He always had high school boys working part time. His favorite was Winnie Walker, an African American, a terrific worker. Jack influenced Winnie by telling him to become his own boss. Years later Winnie had a thriving auto-body shop and would relate how Jack influenced him. Jack Azaroff bought a 10-inch RCA TV in 1946. $450. A small fortune then. He wasn't a big spender but every once in a while he'd splurge (by his standards). Friday nights the living room was filled with son Lewis's friends to watch the fights from Madison Square Garden. In 1948 the Azaroffs moved to Elizabeth, N.J. Frances was born in 1951, at a Newark hospital. Jack left his Hackensack store for one in Elizabeth -- big mistake. After a year, he swapped it for a store in Union, N.J. Six years later onto Irvington, N.J., until 1983, when he retired after being held up twice. Jack made a decent living, worked hard, raised a family. He did the things any good man will do. He lost Florence in1990 and was never the same. In 1993 he entered a nursing home in Teaneck, N.J. He died in 1995. May he rest in peace.