All that he is was built by others and decorated by him. It started about 100 years ago. Three young men, a Hungarian Jew, a Sicilian, and a boy from Naples met in New York City and although none spoke a word of English, they became brothers.

Klein, the Hungarian, arrived here with little more than a tack hammer which he used as a cobbler in New York even though he had lied about having this skill to get here. It took 3 years of learning his new trade to get him to where he could send for his family.

The Sicilian, DeLazaro, was a laborer who brought over nothing but a trowel, worked in pits lining their walls with mortar for 12 hours a day. Bollella, the slick Naples guy, became a messenger runner for a bank. The more messages he delivered, the more he earned as he literally ran each day through the City.

In the Great Depression, Klein, now the son, went to the Manufacturers Bank on 149th Street and Third Avenue to turn in the keys to his floundering wood working shop. Bollella, now the son, said keep your keys. Just promise to always use this bank. And so they shook hands. Delazaro, now the son, kept his father’s tile and terrazzo business alive and built most of the decorative banks in the 30s, also using a handshake as collateral.

And now, over 100 years later, Klein, the grandson, thinks often of all that he has to be thankful for and of all of the Delazaros, and the Bollellas, and the Pietanzas, and the Shermans, and the Bonsignores, and the Krasnoffs and the Wroblewskis, and the Santimasimos, and the Pariscandolas, and the Coccoliccios, and the LaRosas on whose shoulders he stands, and especially of the three boys who became wordless brothers in a new land with little to bind them together but a handshake.