We’re glad we bought Len’s house; wish we had bought his car, too
Did you like the people you bought your house from?
My wife and I really liked Len Sogoloff, who sold us our house in Mt. Lebanon in 1990.
We learned last week that Len had died at age 89 from his son, Bruce, who became my wife’s Facebook friend several years ago, when he asked for the switch plate marked “Bruce’s Room.”
The attic bedroom had been his sister Marcy’s room until she went off to college. Lori, the middle child, was happy in the second largest bedroom, so Bruce, the youngest, got the cool thirdfloor bedroom paneled in knotty pine. It has the highest view in the house, framed by towering pine trees.
Bruce, who now lives in McDonald, was 5 when his parents moved to this house in 1970. It was old even then, built in 1929.
“My dad really liked the look of it. He liked that there were other Jewish families in the neighborhood, and he also liked the yard,” Bruce says.
It has a level front yard, which everyone told us was a big deal when we moved here from Richmond, Va. Having grown up in fairly flat Buffalo, N. Y., my wife and I didn’t know what the fuss was about. We do now.
There’s nothing level about any other part of this property. The driveway slopes down to two one- car garages underneath the old back and side porches, now the kitchen and the den.
Marcy Salandra, who lives in Canonsburg, has vivid memories of falling asleep in the den on Sundays, watching old movies with her dad.
“We woke up smelling my mother’s roast,” she says.
Lori Gorman, of Dormont, says her family would add leaves to the dining room table and turn it into the front hall for Passover Seders with neighbors.
“Mom was working like crazy in the kitchen,” she says.
To give Fran Sogoloff more room, she and Len closed in the back porch in the mid- 1980s to create an eating area. At the same time, they added a large, twolevel deck off the back of the house. She died of breast cancer in 1988.
“Mom didn’t get to enjoy it very long,” Lori says.
The deck, which was built around two huge white pines, was my favorite part of the house when my wife and I were house- shopping in the fall of 1990. Len said he regretted leaving the majestic trees intact.
“Look at all the sap on the deck,” he said, pointing to what looked like drops of white paint.
His real estate agent, our soon- to- be next- door neighbor, apparently didn’t tell Len not to point out flaws to prospective buyers. More likely, Len knew but did it anyway because he was a kind, decent man.
I think of him when I’m on my knees scrubbing dried sap with rubbing alcohol. It’s a small price to pay for these natural, year- round sun shades.
At the house closing, Len showed up with a cast on his wrist. When we asked what had happened, he said he had broken his thumb cranking the Model T that was parked behind the house. Bruce laughed when I told him that story.
“My father was very particular about everything,” Bruce says. “He showed me the proper way to crank it was to hold your thumb close to your hand so if it kicked back, it wouldn’t break your thumb.
“I came home from college and saw his cast. He was sheepish when he told me he broke it cranking the Model T. I had to leave the room I was laughing so hard.”
The Model T, which oddly didn’t fit in the garage of a house built in 1929, stayed where it was for the first few weeks we lived here. In one garage was a green reproduction of a 1960s MG that Len took to car shows and raced in the Vintage Grand Prix.
While looking for a garage near his new townhouse to park them, Len asked if I wanted to buy the Model T. What would a 27- year- old want with a Model T? I wondered. I wish now I had asked the price. My 23- yearold son would have loved it.
He recently bought a 1992 Cadillac Brougham like the one my father- in- law had when he was a baby. Bruce was delighted to hear it.
“My dad loved his Cadillacs! He would lease a new one every couple years from Rohrich on West Liberty,” Bruce says.
I hope Len smiles when he sees what looks like his old car parked in front of the house.
Thirty years ago, at the closing, Len said one more thing that showed the kind of man he was. Our sales contract stipulated that if the radon level was above a certain threshold, the seller would install a radon mitigation system. If it was lower, it was our responsibility. A test showed the radon was just below the threshold, but Len insisted on paying $ 1,200 for the system anyway, against his agent’s advice.
“My wife died of breast cancer,” he told us. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”
“That sounds like Dad,” all three of his children said in separate phone interviews.
Don’t you wish you had bought Len Sogoloff’s house?