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Martha Dubinsky Witkowski
OWNER, ZIPJACK CUSTOM UMBRELLAS
hen Martha Dubinsky Witkowski graduated from SUNY Purchase in 1984 with a degree in print- making, jobs were hard to come by, so she started screen- printing logos onto umbrellas at ZipJack, the Elmsford-based cus- tom patio umbrella manufacturer her father found- ed in 1950. After first resisting, she gave in to her father’s wish for her to work in the company's office. “I had a knack for organizing papers, people, and
things,” Witkowski says.
But while Witkowski, now 50, played a critical
role at the factory for 20 years, she often battled with her father for control. “I threatened to quit so many times,” she says.
When Witkowski’s mother was ill with cancer in 2004, her father spent much of the year at home tak- ing care of her. But Dubinsky, who never planned to retire, still ran the show. “It felt like chaos; I wasn’t the final decision-maker. I’d say, 'Let’s check with
Manny,'” says Witkowski, who always called her father by his first name at work, because, she says, she “didn’t like the perception that I was 'daddy’s girl.'”
Dubinsky’s wife died in August 2005. He also had been diagnosed with cancer, in 2001, but after his wife died, he went from having a clean bill of health to having a tumor in his abdomen. “I think what tipped the stress was taking care of her and losing her,” Witkowski says. Dubinsky was still doing work from his hospital bed, and died in January 2006 at the age of 80.
No formal succession plan was in place, and many people—including her brother—thought Witkowski would close the factory. But she felt a responsibility to keep the business going, even as she dealt with the grief of losing her mother, her father—and her boss.
“There was the knowledge that I had a lot of people depending on me—the employees who had been dedicated for so long, the clients, the cus- tomers,” Witkowski says. “And maybe even more importantly, it was my way of honoring my father’s memory and life’s work by moving it forward.
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