Wish of Grocery Chain CEO is Fulfilled Years After His Passing

Rabbi Joseph Eisenbach, Director of Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest CT

In 2008, we hosted one of our Shabbat dinners at a hotel in Southbury, Connecticut. A guest of the hotel saw us and said, “Shabbat Shalom!” His name was William J. Grize, or Billy as he introduced himself. He wasn’t Jewish but told us that his son-in-law was. We invited them all to join our Shabbat dinner.

After a joyous and inspiring evening, all were invited to attend Shabbat services the next morning. Surprisingly, Billy showed up along with his son-in-law. At the Kiddush, we got into a great conversation. He casually mentioned that he had recently retired from Stop & Shop.

In 1967, he began working as a part-time clerk at the Stop & Shop supermarket. He eventually rose in ranks, being appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company, a regional chain of 406 supermarkets located in the northeastern United States.

Billy wanted to reciprocate the hospitality of that Shabbat and invited me to visit his new home on Cape Cod. A few weeks later, I was sitting with Billy at his home in Dennis, Massachusetts. He said he wanted “to do something” for his hometown of Waterbury.

I told him a little about the history of the Jewish community in Waterbury. In the 1990s, many moved out to the surrounding suburbs such as Southbury, Oxford and Middlebury. Since there has been a growing Orthodox Jewish community in Waterbury, I mentioned how great it would be if there were more kosher products in the local Stop & Shop.

Billy sadly passed away in 2010, and Waterbury has gotten a full-fledged grocery store, Kosher World. But the results of that conversation eventually happened – this past Friday.

The Waterbury Stop & Shop, located at 943 Wolcott Street, opened in a 70,000-square-foot store, making it the largest kosher branch of the chain. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, I told the current president and CEO, Gordon Reid, how his predecessor worked to make that happen. Apparently, he did it from Heaven.