NORFOLK — Losing a business partner is tough. Losing a brother is tougher.
This year, George Habib lost both.
His younger brother, Eli, died of a heart attack on Jan. 10, two weeks before his 58th birthday. George Habib found his brother unconscious in the family’s French Bakery and Delicatessen after receiving a worried call from Eli’s wife, Lory.
George Habib said his brother was “blue in the face,” with his head leaned back against the wall behind the deli counter. The phone, which had once been in his hand, was on the floor.
The older Habib tried to give his brother CPR, but after paramedics arrived Eli Habib was pronounced dead.
Nearly seven months later, George Habib still has a hard time talking about his brother without tears welling up in his eyes.
Pictures of Eli dot the bakery’s deli counter and walls like a shrine. Once a presence that filled the bakery with laughter and sweets, his photograph is now a relic that hangs in the business like his father and grandfather before him.
The French Bakery and Delicatessen has been in the Habib family for more than a century. The descendants of Lebanese refugees, George and Eli Habib ran the bakery together for many years, taking over the business as their mother aged.
Now that Eli Habib is gone, his brother is left to man the business alone.
George Habib describes himself as level headed and thoughtful; someone with a plan. But since his brother’s death, the 63-year-old baker has focused on putting one foot in front of the other, leaving thoughts of the future to the future.
“I don’t look past the next day anymore,” he said. “Eli’s death taught me that.”
When asked how he plans to keep the family business afloat, George Habib’s response is simple: One day at a time.
‘He was never the same’
Baking is in the bones of the Habib family.
George Habib’s grandfather, Elias, opened the French Bakery and Delicatessen in 1912 after escaping the Ottoman Empire in Lebanon. He headed to Norfolk, where his brother-in-law lived, and began to work.
According to family lore, Elias Habib bought the business from a French baker. During the Great Depression, he fed the city of Norfolk with free cups of soup and freshly baked loaves. He was known, respected and proud of his business.
“Back in those days, if you didn’t go to the French bakery, you didn’t have a good weekend,” George Habib said.
Originally located in Downtown Norfolk, Elias and his son, George Habib Sr., moved the bakery to Riverview in the 40s. At one point, the family owned four bakeries in Hampton Roads, but the location at 4108 Granby Street is the only one that withstood the test of time.
Elias Habib died in 1959, leaving the bakery to his son and his grandchildren. Of the five grandchildren, who all began to work at the bakery when they were 10, George and Eli Habib were the ones who returned to the business as adults.
The brothers had plenty of help from their mother, Haifa, until a few years ago when the 87-year-old woman needed to retire. Their grandmother, Barbara, also worked in the bakery until she died in the late 90s.
A foreshadowing of what was to come for his son, George Habib Sr. died of a heart attack in 1977 in front of an 18-year-old Eli.
“The only person [Eli] would listen to was dad. He would say, ‘Eli, you’ve got to change your ways,'” George Habib said. “It was a big blow to Eli. He was never the same.”
With both of their patriarchs gone, the Habib family continued to bake.
‘This place is quiet without him’
Eli Habib tried going to college for a year, but it wasn’t for him. He was better in the kitchen. After a year of studying engineering, he discovered that he hated being behind a desk and was better at working with his hands.
“He was fantastic with his hands. He was a wiz,” George Habib said.
So, Eli Habib returned to the French Bakery and Delicatessen full-time, becoming a fixture in the tiny shop for the next 40 years. He was outgoing, boisterous and quick to make friends. He worried over his mother and had the habit of calling people for the fun of chatting or leaving them silly voicemails.
“This place is quiet without him,” said family friend Fadi Radwan. “I wish I kept those messages from him.”
George Habib said he still has three voicemails his brother left him before he died.
Unchanged by time, Eli Habib’s voice can be heard adding extra items to the brother’s grocery list and asking if George made it to Downtown Norfolk safely.
George Habib listens to them sometimes, but cannot describe how they make him feel. Instead, he takes a breath and gets up from one of the bakery’s wooden tables to get a glass of water.
He’s not sure if he’s angry at Eli or at time, but he knows his brother didn’t have to die.
Eli Habib was rarely sick, but he didn’t take care of himself, his brother said. They often disagreed about Eli’s cigarette smoking, diet and inattention to his health. The arguments got especially heated a decade before he died when the baker had to have quadruple bypass surgery, but afterward didn’t change his lifestyle.
George Habib said he pictures his brother’s life as a timeline: If he’d made one choice differently, he would still be alive.
If only he’d gone to the doctor regularly. If only he’d quit smoking. If only he’d have changed his diet.
If only there was more time.
“I thought Eli would always be here,” George Habib said. “We were always here.”
‘This is my father’s legacy’
The work of two bakers has become the responsibility of one.
George Habib begins his day around 5:30 a.m. He might spend an hour picking figs from the trees in his yard before showering, eating breakfast and going to the bakery around 9 a.m. Once there, he pays special attention to traffic and tries to gauge how many customers he thinks he’ll have that day.
He doesn’t want to overbake.
He cuts the bakery’s famous orange doughnuts with a metal ring, keeps an eye on chicken that boils in a pot on an old stove and folds to-go boxes. For a few hours in the morning, Radwan comes into the bakery to help him, but by lunchtime, he’s on his own.
When his grandfather and father ran the place, a lunch rush meant five or six Habibs working and a line of customers out the door. But many customers have died or moved away, and when the economy crashed in 2008, the bakery’s business did, too.
“We fell off the cliff and just stayed here,” George Habib said.
Now, a rush might mean eight to 10 people in the bakery at once.
But it’s a lot for the baker to juggle alone.
Focused, he stands behind the deli counter slicing pastrami. He runs over to the stove to fry soft shell crab and sausages before piling them high onto a hot and flaky piece of French bread.
It might take 10 or 15 minutes for a customer to get their meal, but no one complains.
“It’s always the same. I don’t know how they do it,” said Raymond Hamlett, a French bakery customer of 40 years. Hamlett said he comes to the bakery at least once a month and always orders a pastrami sub.
“It’s excellent,” he added.
The French Bakery and Delicatessen is the kind of well-loved place where introductions are no longer needed. George Habib hugs and shakes the hands of long-time customers, offering an explanation to those who haven’t heard about Eli’s death.
He might greet a customer by saying, “What took you so long? How hungry are you?” Occasionally he will slice up an orange doughnut into bite-sized pieces and pass them out to customers as they nosh on their lunches.
As customers leave, Habib will hand them a fig and tell them to taste it. Some protest to no avail. When George Habib hands you a bite, you take it.
With his brother gone and most of his relatives living in Washington D.C., the baker says his customers — old and new — are a family of sorts.
And although the present may sometimes be lonely and the future definitely uncertain, George Habib says he will continue to put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.
“This is my father’s legacy — my grandfather’s legacy,” he said. “I have to keep it going.”
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