Alexander Al TOTH

5 MAR 1925 - 17 JUL 2013

• BIRTH: 5 MAR 1925, South Bend, IN
• BURIAL: Memorial-None at Mr.Toths request
• DEATH: 17 JUL 2013, Whidbey Island, Washington

• MARRIAGE: 1954, Seattle, WA

INDEX

[N6808] Alex S. Al Toth
March 5, 1925 - July 17, 2013
WHIDBEY ISLAND, WA - Alex S. "Al" Toth, 88, died July 17, 2013, at his home in Whidbey Island, Washington State, overlooking Puget Sound. Alex was born in South Bend, IN, on March 5, 1925, to Charles and Karolina Toth. He attended Our Lady of Hungary School, Oliver and Riley High School Class of 1942. He received Naval Training as a mid-shipman at Notre Dame and served on the USS Sarasota during WW II. Alex graduated from Notre Dame, class of 1949. In 1954, he married Barbara Maschinot in Seattle. They moved to Whidbey Island and raised their five children: Patricia Stone (Randy), Jennifer Henning (Robert), Charles Toth (Valen), Melissa Robinson (Roland) and Janet Backman (Terry); grandchildren, Kylan and Jaron Robinson, Lainey Robinson, Blair Henning, Carly and Riley Backman, Shelby Toth and Veronica Monell. Katie Toth, granddaughter, and sister, Rosemarie Cook, predeceased him. He is survived by Barbara, his devoted wife of 59 years, and his sister, Irene Csiszar, and husband, Joseph of South Bend. Alex was a prominent Real Estate Broker with his business in Oak Harbor, WA. He was an active Notre Dame Alumnus and was well-known for his famous Space Needle Pen at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, revived in 2012 for the 50th Anniversary. Alex (Al) was a very innovative, personable, generous, good family man, a great brother and loyal friend. He will be greatly missed! God Speed, Al!
Published in South Bend Tribune on August 11, 2013

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Toth, Alex "Al" Wednesday, 17 Jul 2013
Whidbey News Times Whidbey
Alex Al Toth, of Coupeville, passed away at his home on July 17, 2013 at age 88. He was born March 5, 1925 in South Bend, Ind. to his Hungarian immigrant parents, Charles and Lina Toth. He was proud of his Hungarian heritage, often cooking Hungarian foods for his friends and staff at his real estate office, Panorama Properties, where he had a full kitchen to indulge his favorite hobby cooking.
Al had a normal childhood, growing up during the Great Depression. To earn extra money, beginning at age 8, he sold magazine subscriptions to Liberty Magazine, then later graduated to having a paper route, picking fruit in the summer, working at a soda fountain and being a waiter at a restaurant.
During WWII in 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 17, while still in high school. After graduating in 1943, he entered the Navy and served until 1946, when he was honorably discharged as an ensign. Al entered the University of Notre Dame after his Navy service and graduated in 1949 with a degree in journalism. He went to work in Grand Rapids, Mich. for a radio and television station as a copy writer. After becoming disenchanted with being a copy writer, Al moved to Seattle in 1952 and started a new career in real estate sales, with MacPherson Realty. In 1953, while flying from Chicago to Seattle, he met his future wife, United Airlines stewardess Barbara Maschinot. In 1954 they married, and subsequently had five wonderful children. In the early 1960s, real estate sales slowed considerably and Al started selling pots and pans door-to-door. A friend asked him, Whats a Notre Dame graduate doing selling pots and pans? Al replied Hey, Ive got a wife and five kids and we have to eat! They never missed a meal.
The Seattle Worlds Fair in 1962 provided a new opportunity for Al. He was trying to think of a way to make money selling souvenirs when the thought hit him what would be a good souvenir? Something practical that would appeal to men, women and children, and sell for only $1. He was scratching his head with a pen Thats it, he said. A pen! What was going to be the outstanding attraction at the fair the Space Needle! How about a pen in the shape of the Space Needle?
After a hectic search for funding, the Space Needle pen was born and was the top selling souvenir at the Seattle Worlds Fair. He sold 487,000 pens for $1 each. Today, these pens are collectors items and being sold for $10-$20 each.
While in Seattle, Al Toth was a member of the Notre Dame Club of Western Washington. In 1964 he was elected president of the club and in 1965 he was named the Notre Dame Club Man-of-the-Year.
In 1967 Al discovered Whidbey Island while selling recreational lots at Admirals Cove, Sierra and Holmes Harbor for MacPherson Realty.
In 1969 the Toth Family moved to Whidbey Island where Al had a home built for them at Ledgewood Beach, where he was selling lots for his own company, Panorama Properties. By 1971, Al had sold most of the lots at Ledgewood Beach and decided to move Panorama Properties to Oak Harbor. His first office was a converted barber shop. Also at this time, he and his wife bought and owned the Big Rock in Coupeville. In 1978 he built a brand new building for Panorama Properties. The rest is history. Many millions of dollars in sales, many homes and land sold, many friends made, many meals cooked and many parties were had.
Al will be remembered as an honest man, strong-willed, straight-forward and candid. He said what he meant and meant what he said. He did not mince his words. Surprisingly, he was also quite sentimental. He enjoyed hearing a good joke and telling one. He was an accomplished cook, a mediocre swimmer and a very unlucky fisherman.
Al was a member of the Notre Dame Club of Western Washington, the National Association of Realtors and St. Marys Catholic Church in Coupeville.
Al is survived by his wife, Barbara, at the family home in Ledgewood Beach, and by his children and their spouses: Patricia/Patti Toth (Randy) Stone, Jennifer (Bob) Henning, Charles (Val) Toth, Melissa (Roland) Robinson and Janet (Terry) Backman. He is also survived by his seven grandchildren Kylan Robinson, Jaron Robinson, Carly Backman, Blair Henning, Riley Backman, Shelby Toth and Veronica Monell - and one great granddaughter, Lainey Robinson. He is also survived by his sister Irene Csiszar. He was preceded in death by his granddaughter Katie Toth (Pattis daughter) and his sister Rosemarie Cook.
At Als request, there will be no memorial service. He asked that his friends remember him by raising a glass of good cheer in his memory. In lieu of flowers and consistent with Als wishes, the family requests that donations be made to the Katie Toth Memorial Education Fund of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) www.apsac.org/donate-to-apsac, or to the American Brain Tumor Association www.abta.org/

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Space Needle pens are still clicking for inventor

At age 87, Alex Toth, of Whidbey Island, is again hustling what he says was the biggest-selling souvenir at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, the plastic Space Needle pens. He sold 487,000 back in the day, and is now peddling the 18,000 originals that remain.
By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter

World's Fair 50th anniversary coverage
1962 SPECIAL SECTION

COUPEVILLE, ISLAND COUNTY He's 87, worked selling real estate until he was 81, and these days, when he's on the computer he needs to enlarge the type on the screen, and ... Hey, Alex Toth, how would you describe yourself? "I'm what is known as a hustler," he says. "In all the time I've been married, wife and five kids, nobody has ever missed a meal." Right. His current project actually is a rerun of something Toth dreamed up and hustled 50 years ago. He sold 487,000 of these babies: Plastic ballpoint pens, five inches long, shaped like the Space Needle, just in time for the fabulous World's Fair. They were displayed on cardboards that advertised: "Made in Seattle, USA ... The restaurant revolves!" The way the pens were put together, at the top, by the clicker, a circular piece of plastic turned. It was accidental design, but for Toth, that happy coincidence became one more way to hustle the pens. Sure, that's the revolving restaurant. Fast-forward five decades, and Toth is back selling the pens the original pens, in three colors, although he had to replace the dried-up ink cartridges. He's now marketing them as collector's items, retailing at $10 apiece at your Bartell Drugs. All these years, Toth had 18,000 of them in boxes. Call it a little bit of overproduction. "The pens were our sixth kid," says Barbara Toth, 83, his wife of 58 years. The pens got lugged from their Wallingford home to the basement of the place they built on Whidbey Island overlooking the water. Sometimes she sighs when discussing her husband. She remembers how they first met, back in 1952, when she was a United Airlines stewardess. She was working a DC-4 flight from Denver to Seattle when this guy returning home from a business trip starts to talk her up. They ended up having drinks at Trader Vic's in downtown Seattle. A little over a year later, they get married. "Oh, gosh, he could talk. He can still talk. I've gotten used to it," says Barbara. Back then, Alex Toth, who served in the Navy in World War II, was selling supplementary life insurance to servicemen. He eventually switched to real estate, although when the market was slow in the 1950s, he earned money by going door to door selling that new revolutionary product stainless-steel pots and pans. He did all right with them, too. Says Toth proudly, "Ever since I've been married, except for two weeks, I've always worked on commission." So a few months before the opening of the World's Fair in April 1962, Toth remembers, he was sitting around, trying to think up something to hustle at this big world event. He was 37, with a wife and five kids. "It had to appeal to men, women, children, be something practical, and sell for around $1," he remembers. Toth says the "eureka" moment came as he was scratching his head with a pen. Yes, he'd market a pen! In the shape of the Space Needle, which was still being built, but was touted as the very symbol of the fair! He swears that's how it actually happened. Next, Toth had to come up with some money to design and manufacture the pens. "Everybody told me I was crazy, that it'd never work," he says.
But when you're an entrepreneur type, you always seem to find somebody who can help. Finally, Toth talked to a couple of other real-estate guys Jack Dierdoff and Tony Schille, both now deceased who were in management at what was then called University Properties, which administered downtown land owned by the University of Washington. They invested, and soon a designer drew up schematics of every one of the eight parts of the pen. They were very scientific-looking, like drawings for a rocket ship. Then a Ballard company, Vaupell Industrial Plastics, which advertises itself now as having "grown from a small family business into an international group," was contracted to make the injection mold. The metal mold cost $12,000, which is some $91,000 in today's dollars. That is why entrepreneurs seek investors. As with all big ideas, there were initial problems. The mold, for example, had to be tweaked because the plastic parts had a tendency to shrink some days after they were made and the pens didn't work right. And Toth quickly figured out that his original idea of assembling the pens in his home with the family helping wouldn't work. "My wife and kids were going crazy," he says. In those days, there was a United Cerebral Palsy Workshop in Wallingford that was a "sheltered" workplace for individuals with disabilities. Toth contracted with them to put together the pens. The Space Needle itself was the biggest customer for the pens, with monthly orders of 80,000, 100,000. Toth had to have a second mold made, as each mold could spit out the parts for only four pens at a time. Ever the promoter, Toth gave pens to the waiters at the Space Needle restaurant, so customers would ask where they could get a pen like that. He claims it was the fair's best-selling souvenir, even at the $1 price, which was not cheap, considering that's $7.60 in 2012 dollars. Toth says the profit was 13 cents a pen, which is 99 cents in today's dollars. He says the partners made a profit, but he doesn't recall it being a huge amount. "I did buy a Chrysler Imperial, brand new. God, it was a great car, leather seats, the most comfortable car I've ever had," says Toth.
Meanwhile, there were those 18,000 pens sitting in cardboard boxes. A while back, Toth made a call to Bartell, the local chain founded in Seattle in 1890. He ended up talking to Justin Richter, seasonal buyer for its 58 stores, meaning he handles seasonal items for everything from Christmas to Halloween. "I thought it was almost kind of unbelievable, holding onto a bunch of pens for almost 50 years," says Richter. He took a flier on the pens.
Bartell placed an order for around 8,000 of them.. After just a few days on sale, says Richter, "The response has been strong." That still leaves Toth with thousands of pens at his home, but he's got hopes. Most of these pens are in "blister packs," meaning they're in plastic shrink-wrap, and Toth hopes to market them as unopened collector's items. Plus! The two molds used to make the pens, each mold weighing several hundred pounds, are sitting in Toth's back yard. They're still usable to make more Space Needle pens, says Toth. Want to buy the molds? All Toth wants is a royalty on each pen. "Of course I'm still hustling," he says. "It's bred in me." Toth's wife listens and sighs. Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com