Sponsored Content Written By Greg Lewis
Such a nice boy. No one ever said those words to Leonard Weinglass’ mother.
If Nettie Weinglass heard from anyone who had something to say about her youngest son, it was most likely the police. Especially after he stole a patrol car, idling in front of Mandel’s restaurant, its rooftop red light flashing and doors open. The cops had rushed into the restaurant to apprehend a street tough teenager they knew well, a kid everyone in the neighborhood called “Boogie.”
“I couldn’t resist,” Boogie remembers, nearly 70 years later. “I’d never ridden in the front seat of a cop car before. And I didn’t steal it; I just borrowed it.”
Leonard Michael Weinglass, called “Label” by his parents, was respectfully known as “Boogie” to his friends, and by a variety of unspeakable names to his enemies. He was the wiry kid from Violet Street who earned his nickname by winning a dance contest, earned respect by starting at point guard on the All-State High School basketball team, and first earned fame as a street fighter with a knockout punch.
Anyone foolish enough to call him “Jew boy,” anyone who uttered even an anti-Semitic syllable in his presence, quickly discovered what it was like to gargle their own blood through nostrils crushed against their cheekbones.
This description introduces Boogie’s personal quest for justice against bigots and bullies. It’s a story beautifully told in the new book “BOOGIE — Afraid of Nothing Except Being Nothing,” by Emmy-award winning writer Greg Lewis.
“What really drew me to Boogie’s story,” Lewis says, “is how he lifted himself from delinquency to dignity, from knocking people down to raising people up, and from dire poverty to distinguished prosperity and fabulous philanthropy.”
Boogie would explain it this way. “Growing up, I had nothing but I never wanted to be nothing.”
And he succeeded with uncanny intuition and incredible street smarts.
Nothing? In the retail world he would become everything — the visionary who opened a single, 1500-square-foot store in Atlanta in 1968 and grew his business into 1476 stores across 40 states, doing a billion dollars in annual revenue.
Boogie Weinglass — from street con to icon — was inducted into the JCC Hall of Fame in Owings Mills at the Gordon Center on May 7, 2025.
“Such a nice man.” That’s what his mother would hear today.
Books are available locally at the Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21209
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