By: BECKIE SHOPNICK

My brother Izzy was two years younger than I. He was mechanically inclined, and it seems that he had inherited our father's skills. Father was a first-class mechanic and had a shop of his own in a building close to where we lived. My brother was a frequent visitor to the shop where he learned how to handle tools. I remember that Izzy built a sled and made wooden skates, which he shared with me and we enjoyed together. He really was my best pal and I loved him dearly.

His schooling covered from six years old to thirteen in "chader" learning Hebrew and Yiddish, which was our native tongue. After his Bar Mitzvah he went to yeshiva (which is like high school) up to seventeen years of age. During the latter four years, he grew tall and very handsome, with blond curly hair, sparkling teeth and blue eyes with a faraway gaze that seemed to encompass the whole world.

Within the period of 1906 the revolution in Russia began to attract the young people with great enthusiasm, forming various radical organizations. My brother became a devoted labor Zionist and his dream was to go to Palestine to help build the country. His dream, however, didn't materialize, and instead he came to American where my sister and I were already residing. We lived with our cousins and their two small children in a tiny four room cold-water flat, in the West End of Boston. And here, in addition to the six of us, came my tall, slim, handsome brother.

It didn't take him long to get work-in the building trade for eight dollars a week. And so we lived happily for approximately a year until one day when he came home with an idea: to go out west with a friend and explore the country. With just a few dollars in his pocket, off he went. During his two years away, we received only two postcards from him. Finally he came home, broke and looking ten years older, but he still had his perpetual smile full of love and goodness.

During his absence, my sister and I brought the rest of the family over from Vilno, our parents and three more younger brothers. Izzy was greatly surprised and happy to share his experiences with all of US. He told us he had ridden on top of freight trains, worked in copper mines in Montana and as a bus boy at the Grand Canyon National Park. He was not a writer, but a keen observer and an excellent storyteller. We would listen for hours without being bored. Izzy didn't have any formal education beyond the yeshiva in the old country, but he had learned to speak English fluently. He was also an avid reader and was well informed concerning every country on the planet, regarding their particular industries and cultures, especially the U.S.A.

A few years later, when the first World War broke out, he joined the Jewish Legion and went to Palestine to fulfill his life's dream. Unfortunately, there, he contracted malaria but survived and came home a sick man. He was also quite disillusioned with the Zionist Movement in Palestine, and had become more interested in socialism.

A few years later Izzy married. He worked hard in the building trade and raised a family of four. His second child, at seven years of age, was killed by a truck and, since that tragedy, he never was the same. He died at 58 after suffering with kidney disease for many years, and he was survived by his wife and three wonderful children who had adored him.

Many years have passed since Izzy's death and I still remember him as he looked coming to the New World at the age of seventeen, wide-eyed and joyful.