The story of my family is an interesting one. All four of my grandparents grew up in Cairo Egypt. Shortly after the Exodus, the rise of Egyptian nationalism, all of the Jews were kicked out of Egypt including both of my parent’s families. They were robbed of almost all of their belongings, which they couldn’t smuggle out. While my mom’s family was lucky enough to smuggle out a decent amount of money, my dad’s family was only able to smuggle out a small $10,000, which ran them into money problems when they eventually came to America.
After temporarily moving to France, they moved to America; my father at age 13 and my mother at age 9, little did they know their fate would intertwined. Coincidentally, my parents lived and grew up in Brooklyn only a block away from each other, but never met due to their age gap of 10 years. After high school, my father received a full ride scholarship to Columbia University for soccer, of where he attained his Engineering degree and played division 1 soccer as a goalie. He was very studious and was in a good position to become successful.
My mother began working at Citibank after college. Eventually the two met at a mutual friends wedding where they hit it off and started dating. Eventually dating lead to marriage and the two had three children, my sister, the oldest, my brother, the middle child, and me the youngest. My mother quit her job to help raise our family and my dad went off into business ventures where he was screwed over by his business partner and lost a ton of money. He learned a valuable lesson in business he says; you always need to be in the know.
After being unemployed for a few months and after losing a ton of money my father opened up his final business two months after I was born. It was a printing franchise called Allegra and it was a success. With the last of my family’s fortune invested into the business it was crucial that the business was a success. And it was. After my sister became old enough to watch me, my mother began working for the company and together they have grown it to become a $5,000,000 company. Twenty-four years later and my parents are ready to retire.
My mother is pursuing hobbies and my father is now taking a break from work only to start again in a new business venture for his retiring years. My brother still works for the company, which my dad sold off and has gained great experience from it as well as my self, since I used to work there as well. My sister now lives in Atlanta near my uncles and after working for them for a few years as an event planner and secretary, has now started her own event planning business at the age of 27. My mom’s three brothers also became very successful.
After moving to the United States and growing up as immigrants, all three of them graduated from Binghamton University, one with a finance degree and the other two as dentists. The youngest brother came to open his own practice of which my other uncle who is a dentist works at and they are now two of the most successful and well-known dentists around the world, known as the Salama brothers. They travel to different countries and give lectures on dentistry. My other uncle, the finance major, started a beeper business and was making a ton of money right out of school.
This is back when beepers were a big thing. He was a gambler and used to bet on sports. When I was growing up, for every super bowl, me and all my cousins would go to his house to watch the game. He would tell us whom to root for and if our team won he would take us all out to Toys R Us and buy is something. Eventually it all caught up with him and he ran into financial problems. Beepers became unpopular and he had to move onto something new. He tried opening up an ice cream shop in Staten Island where he lived but it was unsuccessful.
One day, about 5 years ago, when my three uncles were together they created a concept, basically Youtube for dentists, and started the business DentalXP. My two uncles, who are dentists, retired from the practice and sold it off. Now the three of them work together at DentalXP, which has turned into a successful business. Today, we are all still very close and see each other multiple times a year. My family has been through hard times but has persevered and it’s a lesson I appreciate greatly. Hopefully someday I can follow in their footsteps of being someone successful.
