By Joe Holley Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 22, 2006
Sidney Charles Morton Hais, 92, a grocer and residential real estate investor on Capitol Hill for many years, died April 23 of pneumonia at
Suburban Hospital. He was a Bethesda resident.
Mr. Hais (pronounced Hays) was born in the District on April 8, 1914, to Jewish immigrants who ran a mom-and-pop grocery store on
Capitol Hill. His father, who had been a soldier in the army of Czar Nicholas II, fled Russia in 1910 and opened Hais Market, at Seventh and
C streets NE, in 1912. Mr. Hais was born above the store.
As he recalled in a 2004 oral history with the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project, he began working for his father at an early age,
making deliveries in a little wagon.
From the time I was 5 or 6 years old, Mr. Hais recalled, he had me delivering milk and bread early in the morning, because bread and milk
was left off at the store. The milk was left with ice on it, and the bread man left it in what was called bread boxes. . . . Before I'd go to school, I
had to do a series of deliveries in the neighborhood to deliver milk and bread.
When he could break away from his grocery-store duties, he played a lot of baseball on a field near Union Station. He attended Peabody
Elementary School in a building that was a converted Civil War hospital, Stuart Junior High School and Eastern High School, graduating in
1932. He also attended Hebrew school from an early age.
Graduating in the midst of the Depression, Mr. Hais vividly recalled the hardships Washingtonians endured. I remember my mother feeling
sorry for people, he told the oral history interviewer. We always had food in the store and in the house. She made soup in a tub in order to
be able to supply the neighborhood with soup for people that needed it.
Mr. Hais continued working in the family business until he was drafted into the Army during World War II. For two years, he worked as a
quartermaster clerk in an Atlantic City beachfront hotel that the Army had requisitioned. He recalled marching to work every morning, singing
with his squadron such catchy patriotic ditties as The Stars and Stripes Will Fly Over Tokyo When the 923rd Squadron Gets There.
Later, he was stationed at Santa Monica Air Force Base. Most of his military service, he pointed out to the oral history interviewer, took place
on beaches, both the Atlantic and Pacific.
After the war, he worked in the family business until 1955, when his father sold the grocery store. He became a real estate broker and then
an investor, buying Capitol Hill houses to rent or sell from about 1956 until the late 1980s. He also restored a number of Capitol Hill
properties.
A lifelong baseball fan, Mr. Hais often rode the trolley to Griffith Stadium to see the Washington Senators play. As a youngster, he was in the
upper stands along first base with his Aunt Gertrude when the Senators won the 1924 World Series, defeating the New York Giants in the
12th inning of the seventh game behind the pitching of Walter Johnson. It was the team's only championship.
In later years, he supported teams in the Cal Ripken division of DC Babe Ruth Baseball and outfitted youth teams sponsored by the
Kiwanis Club. He also sponsored a number of teams called Sid's Kids.
He was a gregarious man, recalled Alan Hais, a nephew, and was a member of numerous organizations, including the Kiwanis Club and
Washington's Oldest Inhabitants. He was always working the crowd for whatever group he belonged to, Hais said. He loved telling stories.
Mr. Hais's wife, Rocxey Kurlen Hais, died in 1995.
There are no immediate survivors.