every community has certain people founders as we refer to them lives have made such a difference in their community that they have permanently impacted the lives of future generations often we only hear the names of these people we see them on plaques in statues as names on the side of buildings and compan during the next hour you will have the rare opportunity to witness the story of an incredible person a person who has made west michigan what it is today welcome to west michigan biography the story we share today is of a founder who lived in the west michigan area his entire life starting in the family business at an early age he along with his brother would see it develop into the prosperous and influential company that it has become today has continued to support the development of the holland area in many ways as an example he had a strong influence on the holland harbor becoming an international port his business knowledge has permitted him to serve on various boards throughout the area most notably grand valley state university because of his moral background and personal integrity he is highly respected by the people of west michigan including his business we hope you will learn from and be inspired by this founder of west michigan seymour at no  a child of two parents who are immigrants my father was born in russia my mother was born in warsaw poland my father came to the united states when he was a prophet shortly after his bar mitzvah and that he went from ran away from the czars army to across without a lo and you have to know that conscription desires army for a jewish kids past thirteen was twenty five years so that was a great incentive to get out  to a pedestrian got to the netherlands where he ran out of railroads and bought and so a realized that he would then have to really have enough money to pay syringe to the united states because that was his destination and he lived in the for a couple years or we don't really know all sufficiently long that he picked up the dutch language and was able to speak in fairly intelligent way and my mother was about six years old when she was taken by her mother from the port of lat in states my father served in world war one and came home and met my mother who was with her family by then my mother was about eighteen years old in grand rapids part was how we ended up here in holland michigan my dad had come to the united states as an immigrant strong healthy vigorous young man and when he got off the boat in new york apparently there were hiring agents that afforded these young people immigrants a source of income and they signed my dad on to  work on one of the railroads out west and they provided him with a ticket and instructions and so he ended up somewhere out in iowa we think and he worked as a section hand on the railroad for a short period of time but in those days the railroads had a system whereby you could leave your money on deposit your earnings on deposit of farming going on around his area where he was located and with his ability to and his knowledge of t v and horses and that sort of thing he went off on his own and was able to get a pack for as up as a peddler and family stories have it that he pedal to the indians and slept with the end ins and ate with the indians and some pretty wild stories sometimes but we don't have anybody to deny it so i guess we have to believe it but he used to come to my house after my mother passed away and tell these fancy false stories to our children and it was magic you know it was very very interesting he had and so that's is much as we know we never queried my dad to about these things i just kind of dropped by the wayside but dead learned how to break or you know how to break horses from when he was a young man in russia and soon eventually bought wild horses and broke them and sold them and apparently came had his fair amount of money at which point in time he decided it was appropriate for him to check in with the family whom he knew lived in chicago and so he went back to chicago and found his brother and sister  with his sister while had a large family and who her husband was a by expense he wanted my dad to leave his money with her because it would too dangerous for a young man carrying around a pocketful of m in chicago and go to work for her husband as a blacksmith well that wasn't exactly what my father had come to the united states for and that didn't last very long so he discovered there were and he was able to get off there and he was walking down the street obviously an immigrant looking kind of character and not native to holland and i have heard this since from then  who was the grandson i believe a great grandson of base even though the who said he saw this fellow walking down the street and looking in the shop windows there were a number of empty shop windows at that time and so and then had a it and i happen to own a couple of them and he was watching this man from the opposite side of the street and and walked across him and addressed him and my father responded in dutch which kind of should come up but my father had expected to talk to people and that's you know there and so there was a camaraderie established right away and he offered my dad free rent and one of the stores and he could live in there  wished and and when he could then he would start paying and that was very common among the community in those days to help and help us strangers so he felt very comfortable here and he started peddling to the farm trade in around the holland and discovered that they had no money to use for buttons old metal rags whatever they might have obviously couldn't carry that all that far so he had a little demo so along the way i know there was one in cooper's cell for since and where he would just deposit stuff along the railroad track nobody ever disturbed it you know and then if there was a power apparently he waited until it was sufficient quality loaded into railroad cars with his parents firmly settled in holland seymour grew up learning the value of hard work and friendships  i was born in nineteen twenty and grew up in holland i had a how i have a brother who was here and a half younger than i  with many immigrants was primary and so no question about where to go even to go to college just a question where it was edited and i graduated in  nineteen thirty nine and that was the gist of it was during the depression still but we were beginning to show signs of coming out of it with the advent of world war two and  lead leaves and the foundries and whiskey and were beginning to gear up again and many of the local industries were included encouraged to change over to war time contract adoption and so things began to look a little bit better and whereas i had to help my father and his business when i was in high school it seemed to make sense to go to hope college where i could continue doing some of that and it was affordable i i hesitate to tell you now but i think that to wish a noun for two semesters well is like one hundred twenty dollars and you know and i could live it all matter of fact just going to school here in holland was good in my later life because all the people i learn taught me a county and these are the people who are movers and shakers in holland later who were kindly disposed to me so attending hope college was a education in itself because i think i was the only jewish student that they've ever had and they were very very accommodating as my father had certain anxiety and one day for early on in my freshman year i came home and said well they've excuse me from having to take the bible course because it's their sense that my perception of the bible is different than the way they taught it and so forth and my dad said well do the other kids take the bible course and i said oh yeah it's mandatory and he said well you'll take it too you know him my dad was a very understanding tolerant kind of a guy and and it's been you know it worked out very  world war two began while seymour was in college like many young men of his time he felt compelled to serve in the armed forces i was a thirty nine icicle graduate which meant a forty three college graduate which was right in the midst of the be open to world war two and so a four of us of i recall correctly took our senior northwestern university somewhat to it because we could go there in the summer time and exhilarate our program so clinton harrison and harvey coop and myself chose to go to northwestern and cecil batchelor and we were able as a matter of fact that spring  degrees and consequently and but by we had previously enlisted that spring it was obvious or going to get drafted and so you could had the option in those days and they had what they called a s piece i mean a specialized training corps and you could if you got it they would let you stay in school until you got or had sufficient credits for graduation and then they know how to deal with right now we learned quick well we had enlisted for forty two months because we had signed up earlier so i don't know exactly  all i know is that at the end of my service career i had forty you got one point for every month of service i had forty two points because i thought you got extra points for going overseas you got extra points for battlestars and that's where they and i never left the united states and the so i all round me or felt i was giving discharge one hundred ten points and one hundred twenty points you know from the south pacific and i and i think i thought to myself my golly i'm going to be in the army for the rest of my life well it was is not too long after that that the army really disbanded after the war seymour in his brother found they wanted to continue working with the family business they both soon realized it would take hard work and creativity to keep it successful and growing shortly after just shards from the service i came home and i had wanted to go to grad school that became obvious that my mother and father were really tired of the business and of the concerns for the business during the war and opi a skill you know office the price of industries and pricing controls and and all of that sort of thing is to do with labor my dad lost most of his employees because he didn't qualify for raw defense shop and they had special considerations for paying employees for the defense plants  brother in addition i should mention my brother was a prisoner of war which when you are a household of two children that was a devastating thing for my parents to have gone through and let alone to say my brother but  so i came back and went to work and my father made it very clear to my brother and myself that he was tired he was tired of the everyday struggle and wasn't terribly courage ing to us to continue the business because he characterize it as tough and sometimes three and hard labor intense business i had had enough of experience in the business that i to be in his wife's family furniture manufacturing business out of boston will or manufactures a very prestigious line of  decided his best most rewarding opportunity was for the two of us together and so we went about it and we really didn't know why heck of a lot about it but there were about got on board and there was another man with the pet milk but he who had these condensed reason around the country that we took advantage of i guess the other they hesitate to say this but very honorable person and could not take it you know there were o p s even prices on there and everything just as there were butter and cream and meat and that sort of thing and there were people who found ways to serve him bent the regulations away that wasn't my father's way of doing things and as a consequence he lost a lot of business because in many cases it had to do with being competitive and so it was an uphill struggle my brother and i drove truck we did all the manual things that are required and little by little by little we made progress  my brother primarily handled the functions of the business the manual work of the business and i did the bookkeeping and merchandising and as he often said to me when we bought a new piece of equipment i haven't been inclined to take credit for that he said but that was your job and that's the truth of the matter that was my job  improved on no where with all of my father had given us we improved on the equipment the transportation the facilities little by little  business even though work occupied majority of his time seymour wanted to start a family with the support of his friends and family he was able to find the girl of history and so all along you know all the way chorussed my mother was greatly concerned about my romance romantic life which didn't exist and i all i and i imposed upon i just and go there everybody else was looking out for me and my father my mother had a friend a gentleman friend who was a pen a subtracting salesman and every once in a while he would stop by from grand rapids and he would have something to say about the young ladies in grand rapids and so forth and one day  speaking to my mother he mentioned a particularly whom my mother knew because their family had as its delicatessen in grand rapids of my mother used to pick up delicatessen goods once in a while and saw my wife working there so and so she encouraged me you just you know i should call that young lady and i said always she's just a child she'll know that she is not going to want to finally i didn't really have the nerve to call or so i called her brother whom i knew because i had belonged to a young man's like c e o me in the jewish faith and and he and i had gone to meetings together and so forth and i said do you think your sister would go out with me you know well you know i don't know how quite to approach it and he said you just call or she'll go out with so i called her up and she had a prior date and she said all in june is just barely free of ice and it was cold and but we did have a great time and then after  it's often talked about the this scrap dealers holy boom because when we got after we left i all royal we went to sue st business in traverse city and then from there we moved on down the cadillac where we've got one of these are all friends of my fathers you know people but they have a solid young guy who is a may have been the mayor of cadillac and was a real great guy and he couldn't have been nicer to us by that time i was getting close enough to home so well i think we had a cold but we were gone for a couple weeks and it was a good experience  yesterday i had lived first in the what is known as the masonic temple building up on the fourth floor with an elevator that sometimes operated  first name right now but these are all great people couldn't have been nicer to us you know there was a certain amount of fear and trepidation recognizes the jewish identity and  where we proceeded to have four children and our eldest son mitch was born there hospital of course then came shelley and we've got some family movies every time we now had a new movie it was of bringing a baby home but then came bill padna son then cindy and where we fortunate they were all healthy and intelligent people and they give me some grief because that they are independent people my wife reminded me of the fact that that's the way i taught the years seymour has developed many interests but his favorite passion is sailing the waters of west  michigan when we talk about what we do in our leisure time and i've been a sailor almost all my life i've had a series of sail boats right now i have a forty five cruising sailboat that i'm able to use three times a week and it in my so called somewhat retirement day and then i have some other things that i have spent my leg leisure time doing i am a a avid historian historic history history collector i think i better say it that way because i'm not a historian and i collect first edition books of holland and michigan and the great lakes and and i have some outstanding pieces in my collection  which i find enjoyable just pull off the shelf one stall out and read some of these stories these old stories about immigrants and community people early on well i could i could add to my story by saying that i was a stamp collector i earlier on started with stamps that were of from foreign countries and one of my mother's lady friend's husband was a chief engineer on barbara hutton shot and they used to cruise around the mediterranean in the wintertime and korea and this lady corresponded and my mother had said well i got lots of french  very picture us it picture esque stamps or lay it later on i concentrated on us stamps and however i have a sense given my stamp collection to the university of  seeing how successful west michigan was becoming seymour chose to participate in it scrolled through various programs and board along the way as things began to develop favorably for us we found my brother and i both found opportunities to become complicit munity involved  to or a means to provide for community activities that also improved and increased with our success in the business my brother was very  sort of thing used to take a lot of time we had some very talented people who advise us and it was it was educational i subsequently we were very active in our trade association and my brother became president of a national trade to say she should be called the national association of secondary materials industries and i served on the board of active in a alternate trade association i also served on the board of an international trade association  called the bureau of international recuperation p i our headquarters in belgium and gave me an opportunity to meet my counterparts in other countries that in the world and also to travel and see how they conducted themselves i've often said that i wasn't terribly originated i could crafty originator but i was a very good copier and then it was healthy for our business recently my brother and i were honored and by giving the lifetime achievement accolades and we've also had other you know we've had our lumps but it's been a worthwhile life and as i said at this national trade association meeting i can't think of any other place that i would have rather spent my  it has been opportunity and a pleasure to have known don lovers president of grand valley state university and his successor and a company is concerned we have tried to take in their might and attitude in our relations with our employees to give these employees an opportunity to feel a partnership with us and the success and profitability of the company to that regard we have for forty some years now had profit sharing which is a  vehicle by which i am plays do not put any of their own funds but the company makes a rat every year from their profits to profit sharing an interview sions for the benefit of the employees and that is not the kind of a profit sharing plan where three callable it is absolutely their property and in addition to which we provide scholarships for employees employ children of employees to have and by that we provide a certain amount of money to enable them to pay their tuition to go to college and we have had a remarkable success of that you have as you know our cause our work force is made up of a broad spectrum of people we have a large proportion of latino  and member members of lead to no community and we've been able to encourage some of our lead to you know employees to send their kids to college where they might not have otherwise provided that how long is a vibrant community holland is an attractive community people who visit us and see all of our the benefits of the community the educational systems are recreational facilities as well as opportunities for employment i have to be attracted to holland i think that down the road i don't think holland really wants another twenty eighth street such as grand rapids has i think that what we have done has been well planned this or that i look at they set backs for the properties and they try to buildings that are being dealt and that sort of thing that that that's good and healthy but we have to maintain that vigilance i think ho will grow i think that we are a very well managed community and i think our board of public works has a great facility our hospital is  attractive facility and hope college is a very attractive but available means of education at grande valley in our backyard is an affordable education there are lots of things to speak for western michigan have think of my life and the life i have spent my education the benefit of my education the community i think that i've been favorably served and i think that if i were to tell some if i were to leave any kind of legacy it's of the other generation i would like to be thought of as a hardworking donder individual i think that i would encourage young people all my life i've been an optimist all my life i have been a pragmatist i by my nature of my education and the my exposure i am a conservative these are the kind of traits that i think young people benefit could benefit from i believe in my business practices i  used my judgment and my job is the information i've had available to me i've read a lot i make try to have as much information available to me as i can i encourage young people to to accept that kind of a philosophy i wouldn't want to say that i'm better than the average young person today the same opportunities are there for them as they were for me you have to work for it all through my life i bet people from whom i have benefited i think of dr not that hope college who had a great influence on my life and my business life i was a liberal arts graduate but never majoring in business and he taught me certain principles and ideas that have stayed with me all my life i have a great many friends in the trade who i am forever grateful to for their openness and and willingness to share with me it's been my experience that a person a man that goes through life and very seldom has more than one or two confidant some he can shares innermost secrets with i'm lucky in that regard that i've had people along the way it's been a great life