Why My Immigrant Grandfather Was Cool

This year is the 20th year for my small business and it’s got me thinking a lot about my grandfather and the businesses he ran. I never met the man– he died over a decade before I was born– but from the scant stories I’ve heard about him I think we would have had a lot in common. For years I thought I was a bit of a black sheep in the family for going out on my own as a gig worker then a small business owner instead of following the rules of a W-2. But it was my grandfather who brought entrepreneurship into the family.

Josel Kawkiewicz was his name and he was born in Bialystok, though from what I understand, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about where he was from. As ethnic Jews his family resented the nations where they lived because of how terribly they were treated. Josel, along with his brothers and sisters, set their sights on moving to America for a better, more accepting and tolerant life. They fled bigotry and famine between WWI and WWII. (Allegedly someone in the family was kicked in the head by Leon Trotsky for stealing potatoes, but this can’t be confirmed. I’m working on it, though, I’ll keep you posted.)

He Americanized his name to Joseph Daniel Kaffko upon emigrating at the young age of 18, learned English in Canada (to add to his fluency of Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and later Spanish when he wanted to talk to his cousins who fled to Argentina), and then brought his sweetheart over to the U.S. two years later, and married her the year after that. They had two sons, my father and uncle, and he became a naturalized citizen at the age of 32 while WWII was raging and the rest of his family members still across the ocean were being shot in the streets.

His immigration papers list his occupation as a laborer, then he worked in the garment industry as a presser, until eventually working for himself and opening several bars and restaurants in New York City, where he lived his 43 years in the United States. How much more American Dream can you get than traveling by boat fleeing the Soviets with nothing in your pockets and eventually owning your own business in Manhattan?

All of that is cool as heck, but it gets even cooler. One of his bars was a gay bar. Now this was the 1960’s in New York City, when operating an establishment serving alcohol to gay patrons was deemed illegal by the State Liquor Authority. Joe Kaffko risked raids, fines, and jail time by operating his bar, and he did it anyway. He was arrested on multiple occasions for it, but the officers never booked him so he wouldn’t have a record. Then they ate at one of his restaurants on Wall Street after dropping him off from the jail. Since history tells us that operating a gay bar at the time usually required mafia involvement of some kind for police protection from raids, I asked my father if Grandpa was part of the mob. He said, “no.” I asked him if, hypothetically, Grandpa was involved in the mafia, would he have told my dad? My dad said, “no.” Make whatever conclusions you want with that, dear reader.

Now, I recognize that my grandfather wasn’t exactly storming the streets during the Stonewall Uprising and he was just a guy trying to make a buck. But I have to imagine that his very personal experience with oppression made him a more tolerant, equality-loving person. And at least one piece of evidence I have on paper to confirm that is this ad for one of his bars he ran in 1951:

Joe died at the age of 61, and as I mentioned earlier, too long before I was even born. But as an intersectional feminist, someone who views the oppression of one group of people as intersectionally related to the oppression of all groups, I feel an immense amount of pride to be his granddaughter. In the few old photos I have of him, we have the same eyes. I’d like to think that means we might have viewed the world pretty similarly if our histories overlapped.

This is also the month that I renew my long-held certification status as a Woman-Owned Business (WBE, WOSB, and a BEP with the State of Illinois). It’s a classification I’m proud to carry since it acknowledges a more uphill battle I had to get where I am today. And I thank my Grandfather every day for being brave enough and strong enough to do his part to make my battles and everyone’s battles in this country more easily fought and won than his were.