Paul Leili still can”™t find the words to express what he saw as an 18-year-old on that Saturday morning of May 27, 1950. He and his family and other passengers had crowded onto the deck of a boat steaming into New York harbor, and everyone, he remembers, was cheering. “It was something you can”™t describe,” he said of seeing the Statue of Liberty and all that it represents. “It was freedom. You can”™t describe it in words. It”™s something lifted from your shoulders, something you can”™t imagine. It”™s freedom.”
For the previous six years Leili and his family were refugees, fleeing the Soviets entering his native Hungary and forced by German soldiers who had occupied the small farming town to leave their homes.
The Nazis “told us to evacuate, that we had to be out on the streets in the morning ready to travel, how far nobody knew,” the 74-year-old Leili said. “I was 12 years old, a young guy. They would say, ”˜You have to do this,”™ and you did what they told you.” His father had a small farm and “killed pigs so we had something to eat on the road” during the forced march, he said. “My mother baked bread.”
The refugees traveled for five weeks to the Hungarian-Austrian border, where the Germans “took the cows away and slaughtered them for the army,” he said. “The people they put in freight trains and the train moved on. My father had a horse and wagon, so we were allowed an extra two weeks to travel in Austria,” where the Leili family stayed until the Americans liberated the town.
The Leili”™s remained in Austria, where Paul attended a trade school to become a shoemaker. Then, in 1947, the family applied for a visa to immigrate to the United States where Leili”™s uncle and aunt had been living since the 1930s. It took two more tries before they were issued the visa in 1950. “The third day I was here I had a job at the Mamaroneck Country Club in the kitchen, doing kitchen work, peeling potatoes, washing dishes” at the Westchester County club.
It may have seemed an inauspicious start to his life in America, but Leili was able to see beyond the dirty pots and pans to something a bit grander ”“ the American dream.
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Only one thing to do
The Leili family settled in New York City, first at his uncle”™s house, then in a six-family house the elder Leili purchased in Woodside in Queens, where Paul and his wife, Eleanor, moved when they married in 1956. He had earlier found a job as an apprentice in an automobile spring shop in the Bronx, then found another spring shop about a mile from his home, where he became a blacksmith.
On weekends, Leili and his wife would travel to Connecticut to visit his brother, who lived in Danbury. “I liked the town,” he said, “and bought a building lot in New Fairfield. I was looking for a place to get a job up here, but there was no spring shop in Danbury.” So, guess what?
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Leili did a little homework and found spring shops 30 miles in each direction, in Bridgeport to the south, Waterbury to the east, and Newburgh and White Plains to the west in New York state. “I said I don”™t want to raise kids in the city, so the only thing I can do is start a business,” he said. “I had 10 years experience then, and wanted to see what I could put together.”
Leili began scouting around Danbury for a building in which to start a business repairing and installing automobile and truck springs. “I went to different automotive businesses and asked them what they thought about having a spring shop in the area,” he said. The response was positive enough for him to continue, and “I found this empty building on Mill Plain Road” in what was then a relatively undeveloped stretch of road on the city”™s west side.
“I signed a lease and started in 1960” after borrowing $10,000 from a local bank, he said. He started Danbury Auto Spring and Welding Inc. and began looking for customers. “I moved into a building with four walls, no tools, no nothing. Everything had to be paid COD. The first 10 years were rough.”
Leili slowly built his business over the next several years. “I did what I could, but in the beginning, I couldn”™t get most of the trucks inside the shop, so half the time I worked outside in the yard,” he said. “I worked as late as I had to, sometimes until midnight because I didn”™t have any help.” By this time Paul and his wife were raising a family, and “the only way if you want to eat, you got to work,” he said.
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Retired, sort of
Then, in 1965, the building he was leasing was put up for sale, “and the bank asked me if I wanted to put a bid on the property. ”˜With what money?”™ I said. ”˜I have all my money invested in the shop.”™” The bank suggested a $2,000 earnest on the $68,000, 20-year mortgage for the 3,600-square-foot shop, and Leili wound up with the mortgage and the shop. “I had the same shop, but I knew I had to build a bigger shop” to work on large trucks because he was repairing the heavy public works trucks from Danbury and surrounding communities. He soon built an adjoining 7,500-square-foot shop with seven overhead doors to accommodate the trucks.
When Leili first opened his business, “we used to make the springs with tempered steel with a furnace,” the former blacksmith said. “When oil became so expensive, we could buy them from the factory with less help and less overhead. On special items, we still make springs and repair them, and do front-end work and brake work.”
Danbury Auto Spring, he said, has a $500,000 inventory. “It”™s very high, but you have to have it on hand,” he said. “If you don”™t, you can”™t buy it fast enough. Each month, it takes about $10,000 or $15,000 to replace the inventory we moved. One month we might have a run on something and the next month nothing for six months.
“And that”™s where I am now,” he said. Well, that”™s where the business is, at least. Leili sort of retired in 1996, turning over the day-to-day operations to his son, Edward, and daughter, Karen. “They have been here ever since they left high school,” he said. “Karen is in the office and has a person helping her. In the shop there”™s five, six with my son. He”™s running the place and has been doing that since I retired. I supervise.”
Each morning Leili drives himself down to the business, which he still owns. “Not yet,” he said about turning it over to his children. “I am here in the morning until the mail comes in,” he said. “I check out things, I oversee things.” It is, of course, hard for him to give it all up. After all, it”™s what he saw back in 1950 over all those dirty pots and pans.
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