IZ: the road from Jersey to Louisiana

       (Part 3 of 4)
       How did Irving Zeidman end up in Louisiana? He hopped a train ... several trains. He got off for good, in Monroe.

Irving, at age 13

       Born in New York City, a kid in Brooklyn and then Boonton, New Jersey (30 miles slightly northwest of NYC), he was tall early and a good high-school athlete.
        He was one of three children of Jewish immigrant parents -- his father Abraham, a tailor, was from Poland; his mother, Sena (Tsena in Europe), was from the Sephardic tribe in Spain. An older sister, Betty, was born in Poland; Irving was born in 1918; a  brother, Morris, followed.
        Irving grew to 6-foot-4 and was a champion discus thrower and rangy, solid end in football. Wake Forest offered him a chance at college football.
        Irv took a train south, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But it was 1940, anti-Semitism was rampant -- of course -- in Europe and too often here in the U.S., and just after he arrived at Wake, Irv heard too many "Yankee Jew" references (taunts?).
        He left, after one day. 
        He and a buddy hopped a train going south bound for ... who knew? 
        IZ's daughter Susan, who lives in Frisco, Texas, said they went from town to town, begging for jobs at the train depots -- washing dishes, cleaning floors -- to earn spending money so they could keep traveling.
        One train stopped in Monroe, Louisiana. And here Irv heard something that appealed: the local junior college (Northeast) was looking for football players.
        Jim Malone had a powerhouse program in the late 1930s and he would coach at Northeast until the early 1950s when it became a four-year school. The now Louisiana-Monroe football stadium is named for him. When Coach Malone met young Irving, he suggested he join the team.
        He played for two seasons at Northeast, well enough to earn an invitation to play at Louisiana State Normal School in Natchitoches. 

Irving and Hazel: the early days

        But the most important part of his stay in Monroe: At school, he met Hazel Bandy, a strawberry blonde who lived with her parents in West Monroe.
        They soon were in love ... for the next 35 years.
        When Irving headed to Natchitoches, so did Hazel. On December 14, 1941 -- one week after Pearl Harbor -- they married.
        The marriage was at the Methodist church in Natchitoches; the women's group there gave them a wedding reception. In that church, Irving did insist on one Jewish wedding ritual -- and he stomped on the glass to break it.
        The Bandys thought Irving, with the sparkling personality many of us would come to know, was the right guy for their Hazel. But the interfaith marriage, as you might expect in 1941, did not sit well with the Zeidmans. 
        Susan: "Dad wrote a beautiful love letter to his folks telling them about Mom, and they could not help but love her."
       For a honeymoon, the Zeidmans took an extremely cold bus trip to Chicago for a Methodist conference, and were fortunate to escape uninjured when the bus slid off an icy road. 
       In downtown Natchitoches, Susan said, Irv began his public singing career, taking part in the annual Christmas Festival.
       The first child, Barbara, arrived in late in 1942. And with that, a sad story. Irving's mother had saved money to travel to see her first grandchild. She took the train from Jersey to Miami for a visit there, then on a train headed to Louisiana, she had a fatal heart attack.
       Susan's daughter, Sena, is named for her great grandmother.

Irv, the World War II soldier

        But Irv never got to play football for the school that a couple of years later became Northwestern State College (then University). The U.S. Army intervened, as it did with thousands of young men in those early 1940s World War II years.
      So he did not have a lot of time with the baby Barbara. He left and soon learned that Hazel was expecting again. 
       He wound up in the personnel department of the medical corps, as a first sergeant, and in exotic locations such as South Africa and India.  
        Irving eventually made his living talking into a microphone, but he also was a prolific and talented writer.
        Susan has copies of the extensive letters he wrote while in the Army and sent home -- interesting details of his surroundings, his moods, upbeat, with the humor he always could find, and full of -- well -- mush. "I love you, my darling," he wrote, "and am missing you. I'll love you forever." (And he did.)
         In a 1943 letter, with Hazel nearing delivery, Irv was anticipating a boy he was calling Benjamin (Benjie). Soon, said Susan, he was on stage entertaining troops when he received a telegraph saying he was the father of twins -- Susan and a boy they named David.
        But it wasn't all upbeat. Eventually the war -- men killing men and innocent people -- led to a mental breakdown, and a trip stateside to Brooke Army Medical Center (San Antonio) and rehabilitation.   
        Discharged from the service at the end of the war, life began again for Irv and the Zeidmans in Monroe.
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        The kids were young -- "we were born so close together, we were like triplets," said Susan -- and the family expanded with Danny's birth in 1946.
        And Irv's career path opened with a job at KNOE Radio.
        Here he became (1) a local personality, involved in many endeavors and (2) significantly, a baseball broadcaster (1951-53, Monroe Sports, Class C Cotton States League).

"Uncle Irv," a popular radio man at KNOE in Monroe

        He was "Uncle Irv" on what was reported as a "phenomenally popular" morning radio show. Each week he featured a "happiness exchange" in which people were invited to nominate candidates for "mother of the week."
        He was named assistant manager of the radio station and had a 15-minute singing program every Sunday for three years. 
        That might have been a warmup for his involvement there -- naturally -- in local theater productions (Abie's Irish Rose was one).
         And -- ready? -- (from a Monroe newspaper article), he contributed toward the development of Little League Baseball in Monroe/West Monroe, helped in completion of a ballpark; led development of the Ouachita Parish Health Council, chairman of the Juvenile Detention Home committee, involved in the Milk Fund, the Heart Fund, the March of Dimes and the Crippled Children's board.
        All that, in addition, to TV and radio sportscasts.
        Little wonder he was named "Man of the Year" for 1953 by the Monroe-West Monroe Junior Chamber of Commerce, honored at a banquet.
        But he wasn't there. After the end of the 1953 baseball season, Irv accepted a job at WSMB Radio in New Orleans.
        So his mother-in-law accepted the award, and Irv was recognized by the Junior Chamber chapter in New Orleans, but after sending a nicely worded telegraph with thanks for the honor and his appreciation for the Monroe area.
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       One other notable opportunity developed in Monroe, said daughter Susan. Word of his acting/singing prowess reached two musical theater giants, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein (you might have heard of them). They invited Irving to New York City for a tryout. 
        To pay for the trip, he did a number of fund-raising musical performances around Monroe. 
        It went no further, perhaps because Irv liked family life better than the uncertainty of show business.
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        The stay in New Orleans was short. The Zeidmans did not feel at home and were not satisfied with the kids' schools.
        Although Irv stayed involved in sports -- he did radio play-by-play on the 1954 Sugar Bowl game (Georgia Tech 42, West Virginia 19) -- by the spring, he had accepted a job at KNOE Radio in Shreveport ... home station of the Sports. 
        The Zeidmans were there to stay. The kids went to Shreveport public schools; all graduated from Byrd High (Barbara in 1960, Susan and David in 1961, Danny in 1964). At the time of Irv's death, all the kids had moved on.
        In Shreveport, reconnected with two of the leaders of his Monroe Sports years -- Al Mazur and Paul Manasseh.
        The Monroe team had a strong Shreveport Sports connection; it was like a farm team. Several young men played first in Monroe, then in Shreveport, including future major-league pitchers Billy Muffett, Bill Tremel and Jim Willis.
        In 1950-51, Mazur -- the Sports' dependable second baseman from 1946 to '49 -- was the Monroe manager; his '51 team won the Cotton States pennant. Manasseh, a Byrd High grad, was the Monroe business manager.
        By 1954, Mazur had retired from baseball and begun his 33-year stay as the well-respected chief probation officer for the Caddo Parish juvenile court.
        Manasseh had returned to the Sports as publicity director. In the late 1950s, he moved to Denver as publicity director for the baseball Bears (Triple-A) and the first PR man for the woeful Denver Broncos of the new American Football League. Eventually he returned to Louisiana; most notably as sports information director at LSU.
        Manasseh and Zeidman not only shared Jewish backgrounds, they shared jokes and stories. 
        Manasseh told Bill McIntyre for his 1975 Shreveport Times column that he "recommended him [IZ] thoroughly" for the job at KENT. Jerry Byrd's Shreveport Journal column said that Manasseh often would call Zeidman -- without saying hello -- and tell him a good story, then simply hang up.
        Irv, when applicable, would tell the story with a Yiddish dialect.
        And Manasseh recalled being out with IZ when Irv would take over the mike at an establishment and serenade the crowd.
        In 1975, when LSU played Rice in football at Shreveport's State Fair Stadium -- LSU's first game there in 16 years -- Zeidman offered to sign the pregame national anthem. That didn't work out, but Manasseh hired him to do the press box play-by-play announcements.
        So we got to hear Irv on the mike again. Two months later, he died -- and as Manasseh noted then, he had just mailed Irv his $15 payment.
        A poignant story involves Manasseh's daughter Marcae, the oldest of Paul's three children and the only girl.
         "When my sister was a toddler, Irv would hold her and boastfully promise to sing at her wedding," recalled Jimmy Manasseh, the youngest child and now an attorney in Baton Rouge (and LSU's press-box announcer for home football games; the press box is named for his father),  
        Cruelly, at age 20, Marcae -- before wisdom tooth removal surgery -- had a fatal allergic reaction to the anesthetic. It was a month before her scheduled wedding.
        "Irv was crushed just like our family," said Jimmy. "Instead of singing at her wedding, he sang beautifully at her funeral. It was terribly sad yet comforting to my family."
        Jimmy said that "one of the only times I saw my Dad cry was when he learned of his [Irv's] death. They were very close. He always meant a lot to my Dad."
        He meant a lot to many folks.
        Next: If he were a rich man ...