A tale of two families: dry goods to cell phones

Oddly enough, while researching the website of Carlos Slim Helu, the Lebanese Mexican telephone mogul who rivals Bill Gates as the world's richest man, I found this photo of the dry goods store La Estrella de Oriente (“the Star of the East”). His father, Don Juan Helu, started it just before World War I.

Juan, who came to Mexico in 1902 at age 15 to avoid the Ottoman draft, married Dona Linda Helu, a Lebanese woman in 1926, He fathered Carlos in 1940.

Carlos, who owns much of Latin America's cell phone industry, runs America Movil, which runs Tracfone, a prepaid cell phone company with millions of customers in the United States.

His recent setback was the collapse of Comp USA in which he had a controlling interest.

This picture of the store struck me as incredibly familiar. Had I seen it before? Then I looked to the right of my desk at that fragmented, delicately framed photograph of my German Jewish grandfather Albert -- in his Guatemala City dry goods store, circa the beginning of the last century.

The stores and the way the staff stand look almost exactly the same -- except Don Juan's store appears a tad bigger, more employees, and more heavily stocked!!!!

Ah, if only.

If only my grandfather Albert, who left Germany for the United States in the 1880's to avoid Bismarck's draft, had stayed in Guatemala with his German Jewish wife. Instead he returned to the US circa 1902 to continue his work in dry goods!

Perhaps today I would be running a cell phone empire!!!!

Instead of only using a Tracfone.