There is so much to think about on this, the fifth anniversary of the January 6 riots, the day after President Maduro pleaded not guilty in federal court, and a day after Robert Kennedy, Jr. decided that American kids don’t have to be that healthy, after all. We could talk about any or all of those things, or the other things floating around as we start our daily activities. But, for some reason, and maybe because we need distraction for a few minutes, I am going to talk about my Uncle Al, Isadore Albert Hessel.

Uncle Al (I don’t think I ever just called him Al) was born in 1893, and died in 1983. He was my father’s oldest brother, twelve years older. He was married to my Aunt Nell (Elinor) for 60 years or so. Through most of that time, they lived part time in New York City and the rest of the time in St. Louis. They had no children.

Al was the shortest of the three Hessel brothers, and I don’t think I ever knew him when he wasn’t bald on top, with gray hair on the sides of his head. He had a myopic glance (and frankly, I don’t remember if he wore glasses or not), and reminded me, every time I saw him, of the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo. Picture Mr. Magoo, and you are picturing Al.

Aside: There are always questions that you wished that you had asked people who are no longer alive, and many I wish I had asked Uncle Al. One of those is: Do you know how much you look like Mr. Magoo, and how has that influenced your life? (Now, you may think that the obvious answers would be “yes” and “not at all”, but don’t be so sure about that last one.)

Uncle Al had a sense of humor, although I don’t remember him as a joke teller. I do remember one night at my parents’ house, when he was doubled over with laughter and said “You will never be old as long as you have a sense of humor.” At the time (I was young), I wondered if that was a great philosophical insight. Of course, now I know it just isn’t correct.

I remember something he said that I thought was funny, but he didn’t. When his mother, my grandmother, was in her mid-90s, she lived in the old Delmar Gardens Nursing Home in University City. One evening, 75 year old Al and 25 year old me turned up there to visit at the same time. It was dinner time, my grandmother was in the dining room, and we decided to wait in the corridor until she finished. Al looked at the residents eating, shook his head, and said to me, “I sure hope I don’t have to live here when I get old.” To me, Uncle Al had been old as long as I knew him. The Delmar Gardens residents were old, too, but he would have fit right in. And, for a year or so before he died, that is exactly where he did live, spending his silent days sitting in a chair next to his even older brother-in-law Joe.

One of the most memorable things about Uncle Al is that for the last 10 or so years of his life, he didn’t talk. Obviously, he was suffering from some sort of dementia, but you would never know it looking at him, because he looked fit as a fiddle. Not once in his life did he ever look otherwise.

One night, when he was in his mid-80s, he was obviously not feeling well and Aunt Nell was concerned. She called my parents and they all took him to the emergency room. The intake nurse tried to understand what was bothering him and kept asking him questions, to which of course, since he had stopped talking, he gave no answers. She kept trying, and finally did get a response. The question was, “Mr. Hessel, how old are you?”. The answer was, “I am 40”.

That was apparently one of only two times Uncle Al spoke during those final years. The other time came on the day of my father’s funeral, in 1979. After the funeral, family members came to our house and hung around most of that day. Whether Al knew what was going on, we don’t know. Disaster was avoided when someone saw Al dig his hands into a bowl of decorative marbles that for some reason my mother kept on a living room table, and stick a few of them into his mouth. Other than that, all was smooth.

As the day wore down, Aunt Nell said to her husband, “Al, it’s time to go home. We can’t stay here all night”, or something to that effect. Al paid no attention and Nell repeated herself, again getting no reaction and looking a bit frustrated. Finally, I intervened, and said something like, ” Uncle Al, Aunt Nell says it’s time to go home. Are you going with her, or should we just let her go alone?” Al, looking, as I said, fit as a fiddle, stood up straight, and with a strong booming voice spoke for the first time in several years and for the last time in his life, “LET HER GO!!!”

Uncle Al, not surprisingly, was a salesman. He was a distributor, again not surprisingly, of ladies’ undergarments, and even had his own line of underpants, called Fanny Pants. His St. Louis office was on the first floor of the Merchandise Mart on Washington Street, its windows displaying “I. A. Hessel & Co.” In big, gold letters. I have no idea where his New York office was. He did have his 15 minutes of fame in, I think, 1943, when the Post-Dispatch did a feature article on him. The premise of the article was how World War II was affecting life on the home front. The reporter went to Union Station to interview, I guess, traveling salesmen, and did “Pantyman Hessel” give him an earful about the difficulties of life without elastic!

One last thing. As the oldest of my father’s siblings, I always thought Al was born in Mobile, Alabama, my grandparents’ first home in America. Just after he died, I was with Aunt Nell as she talked to Rabbi Grollman about what he could put in a eulogy. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I heard her say, “He was born in Kansas City.”, which I knew was wrong. I asked her why she didn’t say that he was born in Alabama. Her response was harsh, “Shhh, I don’t want anyone to know he was a southerner.”

The joke, though, I guess was on both of us, as Al was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, probably in or near my great-grandmother’s house outside of Lvov (then Lemberg) after my grandfather had come to the U.S., but before my grandmother followed him. Is it possible that Nell did not know this, or was there sometthing else she wanted no one to know?

Thanks for reading to the end.