Self-made multimillionaire who never forgot his roots
Jim Zockoll never forgot his roots.
Even when his early life became one of heartbreak, the young man from North Braddock — who would go on to become a self-made multimillionaire — chose to see and to celebrate the good that came from his hardscrabble youth.
“Jim came from a very humble background,” said his lifelong friend Bill Priatko, of North Huntingdon. “He was my dear friend and classmate. His family didn’t have much economically, and when we graduated, he didn’t even have a pair of shoes. He had a small transistor radio that he cherished — he traded it for a pair of shoes that he could wear for graduation. That’s why when you hear his story, how he became a multimillionaire — it’s a truly magnificent story.”
After serving in the Korean War and working as a flight engineer with Pan American World Airways in New York, Mr. Zockoll became a serial entrepreneur, founding many successful companies, chief among them the Dyno-Rod Company in the United Kingdom, which he sold for more than $140 million in 2004.
Mr. Zockoll, whose obituary was covered by two of Britain’s largest newspapers, The Times and The Daily Telegraph, died at his London home on Jan. 25 of prostate cancer. He was 93.
He grew up in North Braddock as the youngest of six children, the son of a steelworker.
Times were tough in their neighborhood, said Mr. Priatko — a linebacker on the 1957 Steelers roster and now at 92 the oldest living former Steelers player — who recalled times when they were too poor to buy a football, making one instead by rolling up magazines and newspapers and fastening them together with tape, rubber bands and string.
“When you’re the youngest of six in a very poor house, it’s survival of the fittest,” said son James Zockoll Jr., of Boca Grande, Fla.
“He had to learn to survive and he had to fend for himself a lot of times. That generation had street smarts — he had that get-up-and-go mentality to do better in the future. He always said the problem with the kids today is that they’ve never known the feeling of being hungry.”
Mr. Zockoll was 15 when his mother died. Compounding the tragedy, his father remarried 10 months later, sold their house and moved away.
Mr. Zockoll couch surfed for a while with friends until an older sister and her husband allowed him to live with them at their home in Swissvale.
But, there were strict conditions.
After a night hanging with friends from North Braddock, Mr. Zockoll realized he didn’t have enough fare for a street car, meaning he would have to walk back to Swissvale in the rain. He missed his 11 p.m. curfew.
When he finally made it home, his belongings were packed in two shopping bags on the porch. At 16, he was homeless.
“It doesn’t hit you until it happens,” Mr. Zockoll told the Post-Gazette in a 2021 story. “All I had was a Goods shopping bag. I went to school the next day and cleaned up in the toilet before classes, and that’s what I did for three or four days.”
He trudged back to North Braddock and sat on a curb, crying.
“I was wet. I was shivering cold. I remembered that an old Irish woman friend of my mother, a cleaning woman at the high school, lived close by,” he recalled in a 2009 Post-Gazette story about Mary Curran, who already had four children to provide for.
“It was 3 a. m., but I knocked on her door. She opened it.
“I said, ‘I have no place to go.’
“I got tears in my eyes when she said, ‘Come in. You have a place now.’
“She was a widow with four kids. Her house was my home for two years.”
The day after he graduated from high school, Curran told Mr. Zockoll that she could no longer afford to keep him.
Mr. Zockoll said he kissed her goodbye and enlisted in the Air Force. When he got his first military paycheck, $30 a month, he went to a shop in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas, and bought a dress for Curran.
Years later, after his patroness died, Mr. Zockoll bought her former house and gave it to her daughter, also named Mary, when she fell on hard times.
When Curran’s daughter died in 2012, Mr. Zockoll gave the home to another couple in need. They continue to live at the home, said Mr. Priatko, who helped bring the parties together.
After serving as an aircraft crew chief in the Air Force during the Korean War, Mr. Zockoll returned to the local area and earned a degree at the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics.
In 1955, he borrowed two suits for an interview with Pan Am for a job as a flight engineer on DC6 and DC7 aircraft based at Idlewild Airport in New York, now JFK International Airport.
During a layover in London, he met Ann Ware, who he would marry in 1960.
“He walked into Barkers of Kensington department store in London and she was working there,” his son said. “He was going up the escalator and saw her and he went back down.”
The couple made their home on New York’s Long Island, where Mr. Zockoll bought and rented out several homes and started a small drain-cleaning business.
The trajectory of his life changed with another brief stop in London in 1962.
While he was staying at the Kensington Palace Hotel, Mr. Zockoll heard from a worried night manager that a blocked drain would force the hotel to cancel plans for annual Christmas parties — and excavating the ballroom floor would cost a staggering 40,000 British guineas or about 1 million American dollars today.
“I convinced the management to let me have a go, and if I didn’t clear the blockage, I wouldn’t charge them anything.” Mr. Zockoll said. “If I did clear it, it would cost $10,000.
“I returned to London two days later with a drain machine, and I did the job in less than an hour. I was a king at that hotel from then on. They couldn’t believe it.
“That was 1962. As a flight engineer, I was only being paid $5,200 a year. I packed my bags, wife and kids and moved to London.”
When Mr. Zockoll realized the drain snake device he used was not available in England, it sparked an idea that turned into Dyno-Rod. Among the first franchises in the U.K., the company became, and is still, the leading drain cleaning company in the country.
“It was very similar to what Roto- Rooter does here,” his son said.
The company became so well known that former British Prime Minister David Cameron declared in a 2014 speech: “If there are things that are stopping you from doing more, think of me as a giant Dyno-Rod.”
In the years that followed, Mr. Zockoll didn’t rest on his laurels — he introduced other similar services, such as a chain of muffler and brake auto repair shops, UHaul trailers and auto painting shops under the Pit Stop brand across in the U.K. and Germany.
While he continued working at Pan Am until 1981, Mr. Zockoll even built a chain of ice cream parlors.
“There was nothing in Europe like we had in the U.S.,” Mr. Zockoll said. “We set up one business after another and kept going and going.”
“Where he saw something that had been successful in the U.S. that was lacking in the U.K. or Germany, he would fill that void,” said his other son Steven Zockoll, of London, who now serves as chairman of the Zockoll Group.
It was his vision that made the companies successful, Mr. Zockoll’s sons said.
“At the end of the day it takes an open mind, a certain type of person to realize and expand on an opportunity,” Steven Zockoll said. “He looked at the bigger picture and not everyone does that.”
Mr. Zockoll became a devoted philanthropist who rarely turned away those who needed a helping hand, and he picked up the tab for every reunion of the North Braddock Scott High School since 1949.
“My classmates are the only steady friends I’ve ever had,” Mr. Zockoll said in the 2021 P-G story. “How could I not be devoted to them and North Braddock and the people there? You can’t spend $140 million on yourself. You find yourself acting like a big shot and helping out all of your relatives and friends.”
In recent years, Mr. Zockoll and his late brother Fred distributed $62,000 worth of grocery gift cards to every North Braddock resident — a total of 2,045 people.
To thank him for all he did for others, Mr. Priatko wanted to do something for his friend.
“He did so much for us, I said to him one day, ‘Jimmy, how do we repay you for all of your kindness?’ And he said to me, ‘Bill, if you want to repay me, my grandson and I are rabid Steelers fans. Could you somehow take us to a Steelers practice?’ ”
As luck would have it, Mr. Priatko knew just the person to make Mr. Zockoll’s wish come true.
“My best friend is Dick LeBeau,” he said of the Steelers defensive coordinator from 2004-2014. “We were roommates and teammates in the NFL.”
When he was with the team, Mr. LeBeau brought Mr. Zockoll and his grandson Max along with him to minicamp and introduced them to several players and coaches. It was an unforgettable day.
“He got to meet Tomlin, Roethlisberger and Dan Rooney, who was ambassador to Ireland at the time. And he got to have lunch with the team,” Mr. Priatko said. “He just had a wonderful time — he was so elated. On the way back to his hotel, he said to me, ‘Bill, all of my millions can’t equal the day we had today.’ I remember it vividly because of the joy it brought him. He always did his best to help others who were facing adversity like he did. And, he was grateful for the success he had. His memory will truly be eternal.”