If he were a rich man ... he WAS a rich man

         (Part 4, last in series)
         Irving Zeidman was Shreveport's Tevye, and what a great Tevye he was. Never saw a better one.
         He knew he could play the role, sing the songs (If I Were A Rich Man, etc.) of Fiddler on the Roof.
          So when the Shreveport Little Theater acquired rights to do the play in 1971, Irv's acting chops resurfaced. He first had acted in community theater -- drama and musicals -- in Monroe in the early 1950s, then again in Shreveport about a decade later. 
          He and the Fiddler cast were quite a hit at the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse -- adjacent to the Centenary College campus -- in the summers of 1971 and '72.
         Nothing but sellout performances. Only eight shows were scheduled in 1971, but demand for tickets were so great, the show was extended three times ... to 18 performances. And then staged again -- encore -- the next summer, with Irv still as the dairyman.
         We saw the play twice. He was as good as -- yes -- Zero Mostel (Broadway stage) or the Israeli actor Topol (movie).          
        Here is who agreed: longtime Shreveport Little Theater producer/director and Centenary theater/drama/speech professor Robert Buseick, who directed Irv in Fiddler.
        In 1971, he told The Shreveport Times entertainment writer/critic, "I had seen eight previous productions [of Fiddler] and never had I seen a finer Tevye than IZ."
        Not surprisingly, if you knew IZ, he added this, " ... Irv was very friendly, but frequently wore his emotions on his shirtsleeve and he could be very easily hurt."

The Zeidman family, 1971, on the set of Fiddler on
the Roof in Shreveport.

        That might have been tough love from a director, but from audiences of that day there was nothing but love for Irv.
        Mrs. Zeidman (Hazel) helped, too, behind the scenes with costuming and staging and keeping the cast fed and entertained. And it was a great family gathering for the Zeidman kids, who returned to town for performances (and a group photo).
         Unanimously, he was chosen The Times drama award for best actor for the 1971-72 season, and he went on in subsequent years to play in Cabaret (Herr Schultz) and Man of La Mancha and a couple of other productions. 
         Then his heart began to fail. Two heart attacks, and doctors warned him his time might not be long. 
         He did not quit trying; he was a daily runner -- well, jogger -- and he kept at it. He kept his beard, grown for the Tevye part, too, until the end.

         And that came in early November 1975. His mother-in-law found him, sitting in the living-room lounge chair usually Hazel's spot, unresponsive. Rushed to a hospital, he was already gone. He died peacefully in his sleep.
         Hazel was in California, attending to a difficult childbirth for oldest daughter Barbara. So the funeral was held up a day or two for Hazel's return to Shreveport.
         Going through his papers in the following days, his family found a sheet of paper on which, thinking back to his early days, he had written the lyrics to a Jewish song for children that he would sing to his own young children in Hebrew.
         At the time of his death, his sister lived in Florida; his brother, who was a butcher, lived in Trenton, N.J.
         Hazel outlived Irving for 41 years until December 2016; she was 96 1/2. She spen the last 12 years after a stroke in a care facility near Susan and husband Bill in Celina, a little town just northeast of Dallas. 
         Barbara, now 75, recently moved from Shreveport to San Diego to be near family.
         IZ had nicknames for so many, and Barbara long ago  was "Babu," his first baby. He called the kids, when they were young and zany, his "Zeidmaniacs." The favorite family dog, a dachshund, was "SubaD," a combination of the kids' names.
         And I suspect that it was Irv who tagged our favorite Shreveport Sports' player back then, Lou Klimchock, a star prospect in 1959 at age 19, as "Baby Lou."
        Irving knew his first three grandchildren; there are now nine. Irv and Hazel have eight great grandchildren (and counting).
        Certainly Irving would have sung to them all.
        It is easy to speculate that IZ could have been a major-league baseball broadcaster or Broadway performer based on talent. But, Susan said, his family had settled in Shreveport, he liked the town and he was comfortable. He did not want to uproot Hazel and the family, keep them moving and into the big cities for possible fame and fortune.
         It was the big fish/little pond or little fish/big pond option, and Irv chose to be a big man in Shreveport. And a happy one.
         "He was just a great big bundle of good humor," Jack Fiser -- another of my mentors and McIntyre's predecessor as sports editor/columnists at The Times -- told Bill in 1975. He was a Zeidman contemporary, covering the Sports and Centenary. "The way I'll always remember him, he was one of the most consistently happy men I've ever known. A man of intense talent ... in all times." 
         IZ spread the happiness at home. "He was always like a kid at Christmas," daughter Susan recalled. "He loved seeing his kids and grandkids with their presents." 
---
         So he wanted to play Zorba, but it never happened. For his memorial service, Rev. Burton D. Carley, in 1975 the first minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church (where Irv and Hazel attended), wrote a poem in his honor.
         It began: 
              Dear Irv, wherever you are:
              I just wanted to tell you
              That you really didn't need to play Zorba.
              You were Zorba -- I mean all his best qualities!
              Your love for life,
              Your earthy humanness and personal warmth ...
         It includes:
              Anyway, I just wanted to tell you: 
              I loved you Irv Zeidman.
              I am better for having known you
              And so is all the earth.
         (Personal note: Rev. Carley, who retired in 2015 at age 67 after 32 years as minister of First Unitarian in Memphis, presided over our wedding in February 1977.) 
         So when IZ chose Shreveport, it was a rich decision for us. 
          The only way to end this series is the way Jerry Byrd began and ended his column in 1975, and the way Bill McIntyre ended his column. Both referenced Irv singing, If I were a rich man ...
          Irv Zeidman -- the best Tevye -- was a rich man.

IZ: broadcaster, actor, singer ... legendary character

     (Part I of 4)    

      There was a young man named Irving
      Who to sing was always right willing
       He burst into song
       At the sound of the gong
       And to hear him was always right thrilling.
                            -- Alice Thomsen

Irving Zeidman ("IZ") at home
in Shreveport's old ballpark.

      Irving Zeidman -- the memorable and legendary IZ in Shreveport -- was a magnetic personality, a center-stage character.
      Center stage, figuratively and literally.
      He was, to those of us who knew him first as a sports broadcaster, our introduction and early education to baseball (Shreveport Sports, 1954-61) and college basketball (Centenary College, late 1950s through mid-1960s).
      After that, through the end of his too-short life, he was most remembered as "Tevye," the milkman/narrator of Fiddler on the Roof, and he starred in the summers of 1971 and '72 in one of the Shreveport Little Theater's most popular productions ever (to this day, I would guess).
      Irv was Tevye -- his Jewish roots showing, his beautiful baritone voice (he really could sing) booming, his large sense of humor ever-present.
      He was a big man (6-foot-4, 200-plus pounds), an athlete once and forever (in his mind), a funny, loud story-telling, room-dominating presence. If the situation presented itself, he would sing ... anywhere, any time.
      He was not -- obviously -- bashful. He was not, at times, humble, and not often soft-spoken. But he was genuine. 
      Long before Fiddler, as a younger man, he participated -- and sang, naturally -- in other plays and even an opera. In the first half of the 1970s, he became a Little Theater regular; among his roles, Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha.
      His dream "trilogy" of roles: Tevye, Don Quixote and Zorba The Greek. But Zorba was his impossible dream. He never got the chance.
      We lost Irv on November 6, 1975, heart disease (arteries). He was only 57. It was, apparently, hereditary; each of his parents also died of heart troubles at about the same age.
      Born too soon. A few years later, and maybe the medical developments that soon came to be -- bypasses, stents, etc. -- might have given IZ more time. 

Young Irving, left, with his father Abraham, mother
Sena, younger brother Morris, in Boonton, N.J.

      Only 57. As we grow older, as society grows older, we realize now his was a relatively short life. But he packed so much into it, and he had so much fun, gave pleasure to so many.
      In his lifetime, he was a good son, brother, football player and discus thrower, a husband, father and grandfather ("Zeda"), a soldier, a radio personality (morning show), a baseball-basketball-football announcer, insurance salesman, community theater actor who might have gone big-time. 
      If you knew Irv -- and that became my privilege as a young sportswriter -- he was (obviously as I write this) unforgettable. 
      He knew my parents, knew their story and, because he'd grown up Jewish -- his parents were immigrants from Europe --  and he'd been in the U.S. Army in World War II, he could relate.
      We would see him around town, and he always spoke. His visits to The Shreveport Times sports department (early 1970s), mostly to see sports editor/columnist (and friend) Bill McIntyre -- who wrote about the Sports and Centenary -- were always interesting. Irv, as noted, took over the room, always with stories and opinions.
      He had grown up in Boonton, N.J., close to New York City (where he was born) and his boast for years was he was "the greatest athlete to ever come out of Boonton." The reply would be: Was there any competition?
---
      This year, as I again researched professional baseball in Shreveport and touched on the first "golden age" of the Shreveport Sports (in the early 1950s), I thought of Irv often.
      Knew he was a native New Yorker, transplanted Southerner. But when and how had he come to Shreveport?
       Remembered his youngest son, Danny, from athletics in the early 1960s and at Byrd High School. Remember Irv's wife (Hazel) with a strawberry-blonde complexion; Danny favored her. Knew of Irv's sports and stage connections.
       But what else? Wanted to write about him.
       So through Internet and then Facebook searches, I found a grandson, who led me to the two Zeidman daughters -- Barbara and Susan -- who survive. The two sons, David (Susan's twin) and Danny, died too soon.
        Susan, as it turns out, has resided in this area (Fort Worth-Dallas) for years. She now lives in Frisco; we corresponded by Facebook, and then met recently, where we perused a large stack of newspaper clippings/stories about IZ, and photos, too.
        Some of what I am writing is taken from those clippings, especially the columns done by McIntyre (The Times) and Jerry Byrd (Shreveport Journal) a day or two after Irving's death, recounting his life and contributions. Some are Susan's recollections.
         Some are mine. Because he was a significant part of my early days in this country and Shreveport.
         Next: IZ, the sports broadcaster