I recently had the pleasure of sitting down here at Isaly’s HQ with Dr. Ray Badzik and his lovely wife, JoAnn – Isaly’s sweethearts who met at the Isaly’s on Main St. in Monongahela.
Ray started his career with Isaly’s on May 5th, 1955 at the end of his Sophomore year of high school. He was a Clerk at the Isaly’s in Donora making 50 cents an hour. Once he graduated high school, he joined the Army’s 6-month Wanderers where he served our country for 6 months of active duty and 6 years in reserves. When he returned from active duty, he decided to go back to Isaly’s where he quickly found a place in management training.
His management journey began in Charleroi. He was back from active duty and working there for a few months when he was selected to go into manager training. The first store he worked in while he was training was a stand alone store in Bethel Park across from the South Park entrance called Country Gardens. He was only there for a couple of months before they sent him to Brookline.
When I first met Mr. Badzik at a sampling event at the Cranberry Shop ‘n Save, he told me about a special manager that he worked under in Brookline – Steve Churma (Dr. Stephen Churma). He had just seen his favorite manager’s obituary in the newspaper in June and the Isaly’s Ice Cream we were sampling brought back fond memories of great years working for Isaly’s. After Ray worked with him for only 2 or 3 months, Steve saw potential in him and promoted him to Assistant Manager meaning another transfer.
He started his Assistant Manager training at the Hilltop store in Warrendale and was only there for 3 or 4 months when they decided to sell the store, so he went back to Brookline to complete his training. Once completed, he did relief managing where he would fill in at many stores including Carrick, Mt. Oliver, and several others. After that, he went to the Wilmerding store on Station St. for 4-6 months then transferred to Monongahela – JoAnn’s hometown.
A few months into working at the Monongahela store, he hired a beautiful young woman who, unbeknownst to him, would become his wife and loving mother of his children. It was 1960. Shortly after JoAnn was hired, Ray was transferred back to Charleroi as an Assistant Manager. While there, a mutual acquaintance of theirs (a woman working at the Monongahela store), got married and Ray and JoAnn reconnected at the wedding. As they say, the rest is history and they’ve now been married for over 58 years!
After working at Charleroi, he went to Southland Shopping Center in 1962 or 1963 where he started working under the supervision of Harry Larabee. The store switched supervisors a couple of times and landed on a supervisor named Miller. They didn’t hit it off well, so he decided to leave the company. JoAnn also left Isaly’s around 1962 when she fell and hurt her back.
After working for Isaly’s, Ray opened up a convenience store called Open Pantry Food Mart in the South Park area of Pittsburgh. He did that for 5 years, then decided to go to Chiropractic School in Iowa. JoAnn went to work for JC Penney’s. Ray spent 38 years as a chiropractor and retired in 2014. In that time, the Badzik’s raised 3 girls who gave them 8 grandchildren – ranging in age from 14-31, and 5 great grandchildren – the youngest of them sweetly named Joanna after their great grandmother, JoAnn.
When asked what their favorite thing about working for Isaly’s was, JoAnn decidedly said, “The ice cream!” Though one time, she was learning to make milkshakes and filled the mixing cup too full. When she went to mix it, it went everywhere! “I had a real mess to clean up,” she said, “but I loved making the ice cream cones, I really did.”
For Ray, it was working in the deli area. They baked their own hams in the stores and would spend time making sure the deli counter looked fresh and appealing before customers started coming in. “We’d use real lettuce to fix it up and put the meats out. For the first hour or so you did that.”
JoAnn liked working with people and especially enjoyed the morning coffee group. People would come in for their morning coffee in Monongahela even though they didn’t serve traditional breakfast, just danishes. They said it seemed like most stores had variations on what they were primarily focused on.
Some stores had a full breakfast menu, some stores were focused on the lunchmeat, some were more popular for ice cream. “Brookline was noted for the chipped ham and baked ham, we couldn’t keep enough of it.” Said Ray. “The stand alone store near South Park was really known for their ice cream,” he continued. “We lived near South Park, we’d go in there and you’d always have to wait to get ice cream,” JoAnn chimed in.
One thing they sold a lot of at the Monongahela store, Ray and JoAnn recalled, were brick quarts that would have themed centers for people having parties – a pumpkin for Halloween, a turkey for Thanksgiving, a Christmas tree for Christmas. They would slice them into servings and wrap them individually for people who ordered them.
Of course, there were also some quirks to working at Isaly’s! “They were sticklers about rotating perishables,” Ray mentioned. One of his managers told him one time not to forget to rotate paper bags. When he asked why, since they weren’t perishable, he said you rotate everything that way you don’t miss something when it IS perishable!
By the end of his tenure at Isaly’s, Ray had definitely made his rounds in the Pittsburgh area stores through training, relief managing, and transfers. A memorable mix up happened when Ray initially got transferred to Wilmerding. He wasn’t familiar with the area so he ended up going to the Isaly’s in Turtle Creek for his first day. He showed up and said, “I’m your new Assistant Manager, is this Wilmerding?” Luckily he eventually found his way to the correct store!
He said the managers would work shifts. Every other week they would switch so one person wasn’t always working in the evenings or the morning. They could also volunteer to work new stores when they opened and could volunteer to work down at the Boulevard of the Allies. His only regret was that he never ended up volunteering at the Boulevard.
“If I had to live 10 years of my life over again, I would choose during the years I worked there,” Ray said as we started to wrap up our interview, “If there was an Isaly’s store around, at 80 years of age, I’d go back and work for them.” And we would be lucky to have you, Ray!
It was such a pleasure getting to sit down with Dr. and Mrs. Badzik to hear their Isaly’s story. If you would like to share your Isaly’s story, please send an email to Jen Gregg at jgregg@isalys.com. Thank you for reading!