From birth to age 17, I was blessed with my biological father, Sheldon Fertig. For the last 21½ years, my father-in-law Martin Breslau gave me the privilege of calling him Dad. While I am my father’s son physically, much of the qualities that have shaped me and that I aspire to as a man, as a husband, father, businessman and hopefully as a mensch, I’ve gotten from spending time with, and observing Marty.
Since the first time we met (along with Carol and Rita) on our 3rd date at One Station Plaza on Bell Blvd. in Queens, I felt we were kindred spirits based on 3 commonalities. Marty:
- Also lost his father suddenly at a young age (14 1/2)
- Also was a teacher right out of college in NYC Public Schools
- Also left Education to go into business
Prior to meeting Marty, my perception of salesmen was that after you shook their hand, you had to count and make sure you still had 5 fingers. I thought great salesmen were flashy dressers who told great one-liners and anything else you wanted to hear to get you to say yes.
Marty was a consummate salesman, was the antithesis of what I just described. He was a great listener, and a gifted observer of human nature. When you were talking with Marty it felt like you were the only person in the room. And that, as Carol says, made you feel loved. He showed me that it was possible to make a living in sales and still be a very decent human being.
He was also the best business advisor I could have ever asked for. I spent countless hours receiving advice regarding both external clients and internal management scenarios. But instead of telling me what to say in a given situation, Marty strove to understand the dynamics and personalities of the situation, and would patiently walk me through deducing the appropriate actions, which often (especially at first) took a left turn compared to what I (or Carol) would have done without his advice. Instead of giving me a fish, he taught me how to fish.
In terms of business scenarios, Marty especially enjoyed a good negotiation or “handel” in Yiddish. For instance, after we bought the townhouse in New Jersey, I’ll never forget the time I had the pleasure of introducing Carol and Marty to a salesman at a P.C. Richards on Bell and Northern, and then stepped back to watch the action. Long story short, we walked out of there an hour later, with both that poor sales rep and his store manager running after Marty, Carol and I as we walked to the car without closing the deal. Needless to say, they ate the tax (among other things).
Speaking of salesmen, Marty owned a furniture store - Empire Furniture (which was located originally in the East New York section of Brooklyn, and then on Neptune Avenue in Sheepshead Bay. He was brought into the business by his father-in-law Phil, and they were in business for years until Marty eventually took over. And then a number of years later they became part of the JGE conglomerate in the mid 70s when they grew too big too fast) and he was surrounded by a bevy of Runyonesque salesmen to his Andy Warhol that have provided no end of classic stories that Marty would relish in telling over and over and over again, to the point where you would recite them internally and just hang on his classic delivery.
You knew you were in for a gem when his eyes lit up like a little kid getting his favorite holiday gift – even at the age of 84. He would start with the classic “Say, did I ever tell you about”, or “We had a salesman, Irving Pugash….” and it was off to the races. My two all-time favorites were:
Irving Pugash was a furniture salesman/former golden gloves boxer who worked at Empire on Sundays because furniture stores in New Jersey were closed on Sundays due to the “blue laws”. Irving would introduce his customers to Marty (whom he would call “The Chief”) and if he couldn’t close them and they would be coming back during the week – Irving would get credit for the sale instead of one of the other reps during the week. After a while, Irving didn’t even try to close them, he just pushed as many to Marty as he could and tried to play a volume game with Marty doing all the heavy lifting. Pretty soon Marty had had enough, and shut Irving down in classic fashion:
“ Mr. & Mrs. Goldstein, I’d like you to meet the Chief, Marty, the Goldsteins are interested in a Spanish Provincial bedroom set, and are going to come by during the week to put down their deposit.”
“Really? That’s great. Tell me, Mr. & Mrs. Goldstein, do you know who Irving is? He’s actually a professional boxer who works for us on the side. You say you don’t recognize him? Irving, do me a favor would you? Why don’t you lie down so the Goldsteins can recognize you?:
Abe Levinson was a stately older gentleman that would handle disgruntled customers who came into the showroom to complain about a delivery, or shoddy workmanship. They would start by yelling at Abe who would let them go on for a few minutes, then stop them by saying excurse me in his gentle voice, reach into his pocket, take out a pill case, and put a pill under his tongue (people prone to heart attacks often put nitroglycerine pills under their tongues to prevent heart attacks when they were in stressful situations). The customers would feel so embarrassed and ashamed that Abe often was able to step them up from cloth material to leather!
Marty was also intensely loyal to his family. He always glowed with the eyes of a kid when he spike about his dad – what a good dancer he was, the life of the party. Or his beautiful moon Fannie, or his Aunts, especially Rose who got a job at a Coal distributor as a bookkeeper (with no background in bookkeeping) and then got everyone in the family jobs that needed them.
But as you can imagine, most of his focus was on Rita and his kids. Suffice it to say that until Rita’s last day – he would roll over hoping to see her, always happy to just be in her presence, For a recount of his fabled life with Rita, please see her biography and/or listen to the story of their courtship available on CD for $10 outside following the eulogy;-)
As an example of his devotion to his family, he would love to go food shopping !!??? When he and Rita would visit, He’d go with Carol on Sunday mornings, it would be their time together. When the boys came down to Florida he would take them to the bakery for Black & Whites. And using the vehicle of these errands they would talk like there was no one else in the world.
Marty never missed anything in Carol’s life, he was always there for everything. And he (and Rita) loved having Carol’s friends in the house, and was always very generous to them.
And Marty was not only generous to his immediate family, In the ‘70s, a cousin in Philadelphia had read in a local paper that a family from Russia – I believe the Ukraine, was searching for a Fannie Breslau. In those days you needed to be sponsored by American citizens, so the cousin contacted Marty, who having no prior relationship with these cousins, assisted in securing their passage over a matter of years into the US. Felix, husband of Marty’s cousin Mary, a learned engineer and teacher, who speaks a number of languages fluently, has a thirst for knowledge, which was represented by the 150 boxes of hardcover books that he had, and that he shipped 1 by 1 to the United States, and that were picked up, on a weekly basis by Marty, and stored in Grandma Gerts’s basement, Felix, Mary, their son Vladimir (who made a home and a lie in Brighton Beach – little Odessa>, now married with a young son is a VP of IT at a financial services firm in NYC), Mary’s brother Pavel, his wife Natasha, and Mary’s mother (who has since departed). To this day, every time we see them, they give us the warmest affection, and I have to believe that a large part of that is the gratitude they still feel for Marty’s actions, 30 years ago.
Marty not only cared for his extended family but for strangers as well. Do any of you know Rich Schaeffer? He always called Marty the gumshoe. Marty got this nickname by utilizing his keen judge of human nature to secure a confession that solved a murder case within 12 hours of the crime being committed,
In the 80s Marty was store manager for Seaman’s Furniture at a store on Long Island n Smithtown. One Sunday morning before he came in he heard a story on the news about a 12 year old girl that was just raped, killed, and found in a dumpster in Smithtown. When Marty got to the store he found that it was still closed, which was unusual as the Janitor was usually there early in the morning to clean it before opening. When he finally ended up coming in a half hour later looking disheveled, with scratches all over his arms, Marty asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell him. At first the porter declined the invitation, but in Marty’s even keel, he suggested that whatever occurred, the porter would be best served by coming in to Marty’s office, sitting down for a few minutes, and composing himself, as he seemed distressed. He acquiesced and told Marty in confidence that he was nervous that the police at the investigation down the road might consider him a suspect. Marty reassured the man that if he had nothing to be worried about, he would be best served going to the police proactively and telling them this. The man couldn’t refute Marty’s logic and Marty escorted him over to the policemen down the road, and the rest was on the 6 and 11 o’clock news that night, making all the affiliate channels in town.
After hearing this story, Marty and Rita proceeded to run the VHS tape of the news broadcasts, the most notable being Chris Borgen from CBS’s interview. After the news stories that night, we started talking and the tape kept running, and this funny thing we called life, connected Marty and me again in a way no one can predict, it sometimes does. It was Channel 5 and the next show on Sunday night at 11 was the David Suskind Show (for anyone that remembers it), and David’s guest that night happened to be Reuben Mattus, creator of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and family friend of the Fertigs. My father swept up for Reuben at his warehouse in the 50s when he was concocting the brand and he had the New Jersey route for Haagen-Dazs in the late 60s (before status brands caught on and people were willing to spend $1.75 - at the time for a pint of ice cream), and my mother was Rose Mattus’ gal Friday/bookkeeper after she sold our floor supply store.
Whenever I would reference my dad in front of Marty, he would always comment on how he regretted not being able to meet my dad, that he’s sure he was a helluva guy. Well, I take comfort in believing that there spirits have had the opportunity to meet now.
