By Ellen Braunstein
Albert “Al” A. Chazin was the kind of grocer customers came looking for by name — the familiar voice in the produce department, the person who remembered what you liked, and the one who would talk with you long enough to make a routine stop feel like a visit. For 48 years at Acme Markets, Chazin built his life around work, family and Jewish community — a blue-collar routine that his two daughters said he carried with pride.
Chazin died Jan. 23 in Voorhees. He was 96.
Known to many as “Big Al,” he was, as his daughter Erica Laster put it, “large … physically and vocally.” He stood over 6 feet tall and had a booming voice that made him easy to spot — and easy to hear — in any room. At work, colleagues and customers called him Big Al, and years later, staff at Lion’s Gate, the Jewish senior community where he lived near the end of his life, settled on the same nickname without prompting.
“He had a presence,” Laster said. “Everybody liked him.”
Albert Chazin was born Nov. 14, 1929, in Chester and he remained, in his daughter Cheryl Kroungold’s words, “a true Delaware County, Pa. man.” He grew up in Chester in a large family with six brothers and one sister, in what his daughters described as a small, working-class household where, as one relative often said, what mattered was “a roof over their head and food on the table.”
His parents were Hyman and Eva Litz Chazin. His mother stayed home with the children and his father worked in a tailor shop. Chazin grew up in an Orthodox setting.
Chazin graduated from Chester High School in 1947. He never attended college. Kroungold said he had an interest in engineering, but family responsibilities and the need to work came first.
He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1955, attaining the rank of staff sergeant and receiving the National Defense Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.
Before his military service, he had already started at Acme Markets — beginning, his daughters said, around age 14. After the Air Force he returned to the produce department and stayed for decades. He retired in 1992.
At Acme, the job was physically demanding and unglamorous, but it gave him what he valued: steady work, a way to provide, and daily connection with people. Laster said he liked interacting with customers and “taking care of people,” particularly seniors. A Delaware County Daily Times article at his retirement was headlined “Legendary Green Grocer Retires,” and his daughters said it captured how closely he was associated with the store and its regulars.
The work shaped his daily life. “He was a provider for the family,” Kroungold said. “He woke up very early in the morning and got home late at night.” She added that the work also gave him a social life and a chance to help people — customers who looked for him specifically in produce and greeted him on a first-name basis.
Both daughters described him as “street smart,” careful with money and content with simple pleasures. He saved “every dime,” Kroungold said, and he didn’t seek lavish things.
“He was just a very, very simple man,” she said. “Always smiling, always laughing and a very big personality. He lit up the room.”
His Jewish life was equally consistent. Chazin was a lifelong member of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Wallingford, originally Mispallelim Shul in Chester. His daughters said he was proud of the Conservative synagogue and treated it as a second home. He served as president of B’nai B’rith’s Simon Wolf Lodge 937 from 1982 to 1984 and was involved in men’s club activities.
His daughters said his Jewish practice deepened after major life changes — particularly retirement and the death of his wife. Chazin and Ruth Kotzen, were married at Ohev Shalom after being set up through family connections, his daughters said. They married later than was typical for their era — he was 45 and she was 35 — and, his daughters said, they were engaged within a few months. Ruth, a high school biology teacher, died of breast cancer at 54, leaving Chazin widowed at 64.
After that, synagogue became central to him, his daughters said. He attended Friday night services and often Saturday morning services, and he made a point of showing up when a minyan was needed. He volunteered regularly in the synagogue office, answering phones and performing other tasks in whatever way he could help.
Kroungold said, “He was a staple there.”
Laster said Judaism was not just a set of obligations for him, but an identity he carried naturally, including in the way he treated people.
“He was just as close with the custodian in the synagogue as any member,” she said. “It didn’t matter if you were a doctor or the person mopping the floor, you’re a person and he treated everybody the same.”
In later years, as his health declined, Jewish music and memory remained. Kroungold said that during his time at Lion’s Gate, he attended services there and increasingly sang and spoke in Yiddish, even as dementia progressed. She recalled that he was still singing “Oseh Shalom” on repeat close to the end of his life. The closing prayer was sung as part of a eulogy and part of shiva services. “It was his song,” Kroungold said.
Friends and family remembered him for his humor and the familiar phrases he repeated throughout his life — shorthand for how he approached the world. One saying, his daughters said, summed it up.
“We should only get together for good times.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.