It was a moment of marketing genius in the annals of fence making, that day 40 years ago when Michael Levin brought his small outfit some fame by knocking one out of the park.
“When one goes over the fence, it goes over a Tru-Link fence,” the 10-second commercial spots went during televised Chicago Cubs baseball games well into the 1980s.
Mr. Levin, co-owner of the Tru-Link Fence Co. for decades, helped create the ad that made the company a household name throughout Chicago and the Midwest, family members say.
Mr. Levin, 80, who had Alzheimer’s disease for the last 10 years, died Tuesday of pneumonia at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston.
“He loved life, every part of life,” his son James Levin, 45, said. “He was of a different era, with a cigarette in his hand and always a jacket on. He was courteous to everybody and passed that on to us.”
Mr. Levin took quiet pleasure in the role his company’s chain-link, wood and wrought iron fences played in the lives of thousands, providing security while aiming for grace, said his son, who later became company president.
Mr. Levin, a former jeweler, took over Tru-Link in 1952, buying the company with his childhood friend, Leonard “Sonny” Berk, from the man who started Tru-Link a year or two before.
After Mr. Berk died in 1978, Mr. Levin moved the company to Skokiefrom Chicago and in 2001 sold Tru-Link.
Mr. Levin, a longtime resident of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood who fought in World War II, channeled much of his company’s success toward helping others.
Sensitive to discrimination within the Jewish community faced by his deaf mother-in-law Mary Frankel, he and his wife, Helen, donated money in the early 1970s that helped establish Bene Shalom in Skokie, the first synagogue for the deaf in the U.S.
“He made sure every one of us learned sign language,” James Levin said of his father.
The temple started with just 12 families and now has a congregation of 200 families, according to its Web site.
Mr. Levin, more prone to spending time with his family than with friends, also treated his wife Helen to the occasional trip to Mexico and regular nights out on the town.
The time the couple spent together–not a night apart in 55 years of marriage–was a testament to their love for one another, his son said.
“My parents would probably go out five nights a week” after putting their three children to bed and leaving them with a nanny, he said. “After 55 years, they were still on their honeymoon. They knew almost every restaurant in town. They still held hands, they still kissed each other.”
Mrs. Levin cared for her husband throughout his bout with Alzheimer’s, which began in the mid-1990s.
In addition to his wife and son, other survivors include son, Daniel; a daughter, Maria Spiwak; a sister, Rochelle Klapman; a brother, Joseph; Levin; and 9 grandchildren.
Private services have been held.
