1.
When Jay Freireich was very young, his
father died suddenly. The Freireichs
were Hungarian immigrants who were
running a restaurant in Chicago. It was
just after the stock market crash in 1929.
They lost everything. “They found him in
the bathroom,” Freireich said. “I think it
was suicide, because he felt all alone.
He had come to Chicago because he had
a brother there. When the crash
occurred, the brother left town. He had a
wife, two small children, no money, a
restaurant gone. He must have been
pretty desperate.”
Freireich’s mother went to work in a