"The definition of Is"

Isadore Crystal, 92, flips through a stack of treasures on his lap, as he sits in the den of his Edina apartment, a look of pleasure playing on his face.

"I grew up in Vladimir-Volynsk in eastern Poland. My father fled to America when I was two to avoid conscription. The war -- I saw mass hangings in my village. I was there when the Bolsheviks revolted. I saw the Red Army racing past us to get home. We covered our windows with blankets so the Cossacks would not see a light."

But his dad came back in 1920 to take his family to America -- to Duluth. Almost immediately, Is was in his dad's grocery store. He made and sold his own wine.

"It was a Damon Runyan kind of time," he says. "There were some real characters then. For a while I worked as a magician's assistant!

"Here's something," he said, handing me a sheet from his high school yearbook, with a line of doggerel composed for him:

If the man will be like the boy has been,
Success and fame he'll surely win.

He hands me an old photograph of Jacob Crystal and his son in aprons in the old store. "I liked the store as a kid because you could always get a Hershey bar or a pop. And I liked the people."

Is was smart and social and a terrific businessman. The store grew. He married his beloved Sara in 1933. ("Here's our honeymoon receipt from The Palmer House -- six dollars a night!")

Eventually, after a lot of side adventures Is returned and bought out his dad and became a prominent business leader. He shifted the store's emphasis to international gourmet offerings. He went into the gift basket business, then the wholesale produce business. He imported shrimp, lobster and scallops by rail to sell to Duluth restaurants. He went into the mail order cheese business -- his horseradish-flavored cheddar spread is an item to die for.

He was chairman of the Visitors and Convention Bureau, and helped organize an annual Escoffier Dinner. He was president of his synagogue. Everywhere you looked, there Is was.

He danced. He played bridge. He read the lives of famous people -- Churchill, Roosevelt, Eddie Cantor. And he watched three talented children grow up and succeed in their own right, Elaine and Dinah and Lester. (Lester is executive producer of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. "That makes me the producer of the executive producer," Is says.)

"Hey, here's a picture of the time I got to meet Clinton, The guy between us is Les."

What's your philosophy? I asked Is as our talk was winding down.

"Well, I always have wondered if the things I saw as a child, those bad times, affected me. It was very dark, but it made me want to really have a life. And I have lived by a credo, which I will tell you.

"Plan the work, and work the plan," he says, quoting an old management nostrum.

"Do things immediately -- if not sooner. Put things off, they never get done.

"Try to keep learning, even when you think you might know it all. Curiosity, that's the thing!

"And respect people, respect that there's a person in there as real as you."

Later, I asked a friend of Is's, what it was about the man that made him so, well, lovable.

"Good question," the friend said. "And I don’t know the answer. But I know this. What makes Is special is not all the things he's seen and done, which have been something.

"What makes him special is who he is right now -- inquisitive, attentive, and present in the moment.

"The greatest thing about Is ... he just is." !

Lives & Visions

#103 
Is Crystal

by Michael Finley

(c) 2001 by Michael Finley

651-644-4540