Phil Myzel, a.k.a. Zayda Buddy, was born a while back in a very poor village in Lithuania where people did not keep birth records, but Zayda figured he was born in April between the years of 1911 and 1913. Zayda arrived in the United States on the 4th of July in 1921. Negotiations with the U.S. Immigration officers ended in the decision to place his age at 8 years old. After arriving in the U.S., Zayda, along with his his mother, brother and three sisters, took the railway to northern Minnesota. Zayda’s father owned a small farmjust outside of Duluth, Minnesota, where he was waiting for his family to arrive after finally saving enough money to get them out of that poor village in Lithuania. Zayda Buddy was now a true American… a Minnesotan.
After years on the farm, Zayda dropped out of high school to sell newspapers on the street for the Duluth News Tribune to bring home extra cash for the family. From there he worked his way up to advertising where he really became Duluth’s man about town.