IRVING I. STONE MY BIALYSTOK CONNECTION My father, Jacob Sapirstein, was born in Bialystok and later lived in Grajewo, a nearby village. In 1905, the Cossacks came and burned it down. At that time the Russo-Japanese War was being fought, and my father decided to leave rather than go into the army, because he had seen his friends coming back as cripples. He watched despairingly as straw-filled wagons pulled up, disgorging maimed soldiers with no concern for their welfare. Families and friends had to take care of them as best they could. My father vowed to leave home to escape the Czarist oppression. He went to Szczecin, then crossed the border into Germany. The Jewish community there put him in a hospital for six weeks to build him up because of malnutrition. The Joint Distribution Committee brought him to America. He arrived in Boston in 1905 and then went to Chicago, where HIAS secured a job for him as an apprentice tailor at Hart, Schaffner & Marx. He did not like this work and contacted an uncle in Cleveland who owned a postcard store in the old Hollenden Hotel. Coming to Cleveland in 1906, he became a clerk in his uncle’s store. At that time stores sold a lot of post- cards. Within a year his relatives announced they were closing the card shop because they could barely make a living wage, and advised him to seek other employment. Not knowing any other work, Jacob Sapirstein set up business for himself in his boardinghouse room. He bought postcards and sold them out of a suitcase to drug stores, candy stores and novelty shops. Operating from a horse-drawn wagon, he was buyer, salesman, order filler, delivery boy and bookkeeper. Prior to World War I, most postcards were imported from Germany. When imports stopped, Jacob Sapirstein bought the new “‘folder’’ cards made in America. As his sons Irving, Morris and Harry grew up, they joined the business. In the late 1920’s the family published and manu- factured their own greeting cards, recognizing this was more profitable. The Depression saw great growth in greeting cards, because people could not afford gifts and sent cards instead. World War II brought further growth as families moved about the country and sent more cards to keep in touch. Today the company started by Jacob Sapirstein — American Greeting Corporation -- has_ 19,000 employees and does over $500 million worth of business a year. There are 24 plants in the United States, Mexico and Canada and four plants in Europe. Throughout his life, Jacob Sapirstein has observed the Sabbath and remained active in Jewish organiza- The Bialystoker Memorial Book Irving |. Stone tions. He was one of the founders of the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, a day school with over 800 stu- dents. He purchased 400 dunams of land in Israel and helped establish Kiryat Telshe-Stone, a growing city. He married the former Jennie Kantor, a native of his hometown, in Cleveland on June 7, 1908. She worked at his side during the early days of the business; both filled postcard orders at night. Mrs. Saperstein died on November 29, 1969. They had four children: Irving I. Stone, Chairman of the Board and Chief Exec- utive Officer of American Greetings Corporation; Mor- ris S. Stone, Vice Chairman of the Company; Harry R. Stone, President of Courtland Management, Inc.; and Mrs. David E. Davis (Bernice M.). The family also includes twelve granchildren, twenty-one _ great- grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. American Greetings Corporation, founded by Jacob Sapirstein in 1906, celebrated its seventy-fifth year in 1981. The company blossmed from a small one- man enterprise into a multinational, publicly owned corporation, the largest of its kind in the world. Despite the difficult economic climate it faced, American Greetings reported record achievement in both sales and earnings. It is encouraged by a clear upward trend in greeting card sales, reflecting people’s need to express their sentiments on both joyous and sad occasions. The company employs 19,000 staff, whose creative talents are demonstrated in American Greetings’ prod- uct diversity and design. Once again, Bialystoker enter- prise and ambition have been well demonstrated. 175