Sidney Thal, owner of Fox's Gem Shop, dies at 92

At a time when Seattle was still considered a backwater, Sidney Thal was the picture of Continental elegance. Although he lived nearly his entire life in Western Washington, to pass Mr. Thal in the street was to be transported to the salons and haberdasheries of London's Saville Row. He always wore a three-piece suit and his trademark bowler, with his 1954 black Austin taxicab parked in front of his downtown Seattle gem store.

Mr. Thal, who in his later years wintered in Palm Springs, Calif., but returned to Seattle with the sun, died at his Palm Springs home Monday of natural causes. He was 92.

For more than 50 years, his smiling, mustachioed face greeted generations of shoppers at Fox's Gem Shop, first in the Skinner Building, then in the Rainier Building, both on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Thal was considered one of the city's most endearing personalities.

"I'm amazed by how many people's lives he touched," said his son-in-law, Chai Mann. "He connected with people on such an incredible basis they became friends forever. Now their kids and their kids' kids come into the shop. Everyone knew him."

It was an impulse buy that cemented Mr. Thal's legend in Seattle.

He was born in Massachusetts in 1909 to Jewish immigrants. His father, Samuel, was a militant socialist who moved his family to Bellingham in 1916 after receiving attention from police when he tried to unionize local tailors. Mr. Thal, a talented pianist, moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. He met his future wife, Berta Altose, at piano lessons.

The 1929 stock-market crash ended his studies. He became a traveling salesman, moved to Portland and settled back in Washington state at the start of World War II, where he was a civilian manager for the Navy in Seattle. After the war, he took a job at Fox's Gem Shop.

In 1949, the Thals bought the store for $15,000. The couple struggled at first — money was so tight they couldn't afford the paint to change the name — but the business slowly grew. In 1966, Mr. Thal and two friends bid on the black London cab. When the others tired of it, he bought them out, not realizing how central to his image the shiny black taxi would become.

"He drove that thing all over town," Mann said. "He gave people rides to their weddings in it. He was in it at just about every Husky football game. It had a double clutch and the steering on the right side. He was the only one who knew how to drive it."

When Mann speaks of his father-in-law, whom he worked with for 20 years, his voice mixes awe with a little exasperation. Mann, 56, often pushed Mr. Thal to loosen up, to change the strict dress code in his store, to embrace tennis shoes and polo shirts. Mr. Thal resisted, of course, sticking to his suits and shined leather shoes.

This friendly tension became the subject of the famous advertisements Mr. Thal began writing in 1993. One ad titled "Why My Son-in-Law Made Me Advertising Manager" had subheads: "The Generation Gap" and "The Only Bone I Have to Pick With My Son-In-Law Is the Advertising." In time, these little stories would become as famous as the cab and bowler hat.

Mr. Thal never officially retired. But as he aged, he devoted much of his time to writing, composing short stories and poems about the importance of his family.

"One of the last things he told me," daughter Joy Mann said, "is that the best thing he accomplished was to have a loving family and that he was able to pass it on."

Mr. Thal was preceded in death by his wife in 1996. Besides his son-in-law and daughter Joy, he is survived by son Stephen Thal of Marin County, Calif., and daughter Cindy Muscatel of Palm Springs.

Services will be at 1 p.m. Friday at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 1441 16th Ave., Seattle.