STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS
By Bob Doherty
Nova Scotia football fans will soon be trekking to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro for their annual excursion to see their beloved New England Patriots. But few will know or realize that the Patriots franchise builder and owner, Robert Kraft, has a strong connection to Nova Scotia and the Atlantic provinces that even played a pivotal role in the creation of the Patriots dynasty. That connection still exists today, and Kraft is proud of his heritage that began here.
Robert Kraft’s mother Sarah Bryna (Webber) Kraft was born and grew up in Halifax, N.S., and Robert Kraft made his first major business investment in Newfoundland and Labrador.
It is often said that most, if not all, of us stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. That certainly applies to Sarah’s family and the Kraft family as well. The story begins in Lithuania and Poland where Sarah’s parents grew up during a period of economic hardship and persecution of Jews. They later immigrated to Saint John, N.B., in the late 19th century. Sarah’s father, Abraham Sivovlos Webber, was one of eight brothers and an entrepreneur. He immigrated to New Brunswick in 1886 and set up a millinery shop, selling hats and clothing items in Saint John. Sarah’s mother, Elizabeth Leby Godine (Godinsky) Webber, immigrated to Saint John in 1890. They married in 1893 in Montreal.
They had six children in Saint John, with the youngest (Henry) dying shortly after childbirth. They moved to Nova Scotia in the early 1900s after Abraham’s brother Copel Webber and two of his other brothers immigrated to Halifax in 1899. Abraham set up another millinery shop on Gottingen Street. The family lived on Brunswick Street just south of Cornwallis Street and St. Patrick’s and St. George’s churches. It was about a mile from the Narrows where the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge was built in the 1950s.
Four more children were born to Abraham and Elizabeth in Halifax, and Sarah, born in 1911, was the second youngest of her nine siblings. The family home on Brunswick Street near the Narrows would seem to have been in the destructive path of the Halifax Explosion on the morning of Dec. 6, 1917. Sarah was temporarily blinded by the explosion and according to Kraft remarkably had her sight restored by a Halifax veterinarian. Other than Sarah’s temporary blindness, it appears that all of her siblings and her parents survived the explosion that claimed the lives of some people who lived on Brunswick Street.
Kraft noted in a recent phone interview from his office at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, that he only heard about her experience in later years after she immigrated to Boston.
“She was always sensitive about her eyes, and explained to me that her experience during the Explosion was the reason,” he added.
Dr. Jock Murray, a prominent Halifax neurologist and former dean of the Dalhousie University Medical School, has extensively researched the assistance provided by medical and other professionals to the survivors of the Halifax Explosion.
“The majority of injuries from the explosion was in flying glass getting embedded in the heads and eyes of people,” he said.
“They divided the city into eight districts and each had a medical station established in a house or other building, staffed by nurses, other professionals and volunteers like the women of the Volunteer Aid Detachment (VADS). It is conceivable that a veterinarian could be a volunteer, and initial care for eye injuries would be provided at a medical station for soot, blood and debris affecting sight. If surgery was needed it was provided by 15 eye surgeons at the major hospitals. “
The Webbers became one of the largest and most prominent Jewish families in the city and in 1915 built the first Jewish synagogue (the Webber Schul) on a parcel of land owned by Abraham on what was then known as Proctor Street near what is now Scotia Square. The synagogue continued as a landmark in the Halifax Jewish Community as late as 1936 before it closed.
The synagogue and the land it rested were donated to the Baron de Hirsch Benevolent Society, a Jewish philanthropic organization. The Society had by that time already established a synagogue on Robie Street where O’Regan’s car dealership is now. This congregation later split into what is now Beth Israel and Shaar Shalom synagogues. The Webber family also had a private cemetery on Windsor Street adjacent to the first Jewish cemetery established in Halifax in 1893. They later donated that parcel of land to the Baron de Hirsch Benevolent Society as an addition to the existing cemetery.
Sarah’s father, Abraham, died in 1923 and her mother passed away in 1931 at the height of the Depression. Sarah had visited the United States a few times before her mother’s death and decided to immigrate to the US. travelling by train and crossing the border with her younger brother Alfred at Vanceboro, Maine, that same year. Her older sister Zelda had already immigrated to Boston and Sarah and Alfred joined her there living in an apartment in the Brighton section of the city. Sarah continued to return to Halifax between 1931 and 1934, but those visits temporarily halted after she met and was courted by Harry Kraft, whom she married in 1935. She became a U.S. citizen in 1937. She and Harry had three children with Robert Kraft, born in 1941, being the middle child with an older brother and younger sister. All of Sarah’s siblings at one time or another immigrated to New England, settling in Boston and other towns and cities, including Danvers Mass., and Portsmouth N.H.
Four of the siblings of Sarah’s father seem to have remained in Halifax and had a variety of businesses and shops and many of their direct descendants continue to live in the city now. They owned such businesses as the former New York Dress Shop at the corner of Gottingen and Cornwallis Streets and Maxwell’s Plum, which originally existed at the corner of Grafton and Sackville Streets.
While the early years in the Boston area must have been challenging for Sarah Webber, Kraft implies that his mother made it all somehow work.
“My father was not someone of great financial means, but he was a man of great integrity, learning, and character and was always looking out for others,” he said.
“He always told me that before I went to sleep at night, I should ask myself how I made someone else’s life richer that day,” Kraft added.
“My mother was much more practical,” Kraft said with the strong implication that it was her husbandry that carried them through those years.
He speaks fondly and with great nostalgia about his mother and her influence on his life, exemplified by the credo she would send him off to school after breakfast every day.
“She would tell us, ‘work hard, persevere, and look out after others,’ ” he said.
That this philosophy stuck with him is fairly obvious both in his business career and his marriage to his late wife Myra Nathalie (Hiatt) Kraft, a kindred spirit and partner in the various causes that their philanthropy supported over many years.
These included donations totalling in the hundreds of millions of dollars to higher education, health care, child and women-related causes, youth sports, and American and Israeli causes.
Kraft is well known as the owner of the New England Patriots, and as a successful owner of the Kraft Group of Companies. What is not as well-known is how much of a role the Atlantic provinces played in his business success that ultimately led him to purchase the New England Patriots.
His business career began with part ownership in the Rand and Whitney Group, a paper and packaging products firm run by his father-in-law Jacob Hiatt in Worcester, Mass. That led him to the Maritime provinces and later to Newfoundland and Labrador, doing business with paper and packaging companies.
“I was doing business with a paper products company in Halifax and flying into Halifax quite regularly and then moving on to Saint John, New Brunswick and the Irving paper company,” Kraft said.
Then in 1972 at the age of 31, he launched his first major business venture by buying an option to purchase, and later buy, the International Forest Products Mill in Stephenville, N.L. This initial venture catapulted his career in business to the point where Kraft Enterprises now owns several companies (including a paper mill in Ontario), sports franchises, including the Patriots and Revolution, as well as Gillette Stadium where the team plays. In fact, in a National Post story in February 2017 on the eve of Superbowl LI, Kraft indicated that his business success starting in Newfoundland provided the wherewithal for him to purchase the New England Patriots.
“My mother always considered herself a Nova Scotian and a proud Canadian. I have always regarded myself as part of a Nova Scotia brotherhood as well,” he said.
It was obvious throughout the interview with Kraft that by taking the time amid a busy schedule at the age of 81, he was proud of what his mother gave him in terms of guidance, but also his family and business roots in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
“Maritimers are private people,” he said. “But if you make a connection with them, and they see that you are genuine, then you can gain some lasting friendships with them”, he added.
Yes, Mr. Kraft, I think you got us right.
Sources: Wikipedia, N.S. Archives, Pier 21 Immigration Museum, Halifax Regional Municipality Archives, Beth Israel Synagogue, “A hopeful City and a Canadian Connection” by John Kryk, National Post February 1, 2017, “The Dynasty” by Jeff Benedict, Dr. Jock Murray, Halifax Historian Blair Beed, the Atlantic Jewish Council, and a personal interview with Robert Kraft.
Bob Doherty is a freelance writer and author living in Halifax.
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