Born in 1897 in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Izaak and his brothers Abraham and Jakub were Hungarian on their father's side and Polish-Czechoslovakian on their mother's side. Polish became their first language as they were raised in a household that primarily followed Polish customs.
The family immigrated to the United States when he was seven, settling on a family farm in the small city of Charlotte, North Carolina. His father worked in a cotton mill. Since the boys were deemed old enough to care for themselves, his mother took on work as a maid in the main house at a tobacco plantation. As they quickly learned English, the boys picked up a decidedly southern drawl with a strong hint of their Polish accent.
He suffered from repeated infections from a serious horse bite on his right flank as a child. The bite broke several ribs and left a large crescent-shaped scar. His mother and brothers nursed him back to health with each bout of infection and his brothers took up a game of drawing in ink on his scar while he slept to keep him entertained during his rounds of fevers and chills. He eventually made peace with the horse, going so far as to learn how to care for it as a farrier.
While tending the family farm and attending school, the boys picked up odd jobs to help support the family, but all three were drafted into the Great War in Europe. Izaak's experience with horses earned him a position in one of the Army's Corps Mobile Veterinary Hospitals, where he was assigned with two officers and 34 other enlisted men to treat the wounded and ill horses from the battlefield.
He has no memory of being murdered in France in 1918. The night after winning a match at a soldiers' Queensberry rules boxing tournament, the last thing Izaak remembered was tending to war horses recovering from field injuries.
He woke in the frigid water 50 feet down at the bottom of a deep, dark well with no idea of how he got there. He treaded water and clung to the stone walls until his fingers were completely numb, then floated the best he could. No one heard his breathless cries for help. Just as he was beginning to give up hope and struggling to keep his head above water, a long rope fashioned into a looped harness was lowered in front of him. With a great deal of effort, he managed to loop it under his arms, drinking half of the well water in the process, and was pulled to safety by several of his enlisted friends and an officer he'd never seen before.
Several of the horses he'd been tending were missing and the speculation by some had been that he'd taken them to sell to the French, until the officer investigating black market thefts heard his faint cries for help. Now, it was assumed that he'd been attacked by parties unknown to steal the horses. The officer would eventually uncover that he was attacked by a group of gambling soldiers who were angry that he'd cost them money in his last boxing match -- after they tried again when they learned he had survived and feared he could identify them.
Izaak sensed something suspicious about the investigating officer, but couldn't put his finger on it. There was something about the man that was... off, setting him on edge. So he did what any dutiful soldier would do, he followed him to discover what nefarious activities were setting off his suspicions. The last thing he expected was to find a sword held to this throat with a demand to explain himself.
And that was how he met Odessa, an immortal woman posing as a man to serve in the war. She explained what he was -- and after quite a bit of convincing, he eventually believed her -- and took him on as her student. After the war, they returned to Charlotte, where Odessa trained him extensively in how to protect himself should he encounter another immortal.
His brother Jakub developed a plan for him to assume a new identity within the family every so often to help allay outside suspicions.
Nearly 30 years later, he served under the name of an alter ego in the Veterinary Corps again in the second world war. He lost a very close friend in the war and, upon returning home, returned David's belongings to his young, pregnant widow. With reluctance, knowing the challenges she would face as a single mother, he took on the responsibility of helping his friend's widow. They were married two days before the baby's birth and suddenly he had a wife and a newborn son in his life. At first, it was a loveless marriage -- more of a business arrangement in which he slept in another room but helped to provide for his friend's family. It took time for Elizabeth and him to learn to love one another, but his love for young David was instantaneous.
Tragedy struck in 1949, when a stranger's out of control automobile slammed into theirs and pushed them off of a bridge. The car settled on its top about 15 feet below the surface of a small, shallow river. Izaak struck his head and drowned in the accident, but although he revived quickly, he was unable to save Elizabeth or four-year-old Davey when he freed them from the wreckage.
An investigation proved that the accident had been caused by poor-quality repair work on the vehicle that had lost control. The mechanic, a man named Loren, admitted to police that he'd used substandard parts that made the work more likely to fail in order to pad his profits on the job, but since there was no law in place to hold him accountable for the accident, he was released.
When Izaak learned of it, he decided to pay a visit to the garage after hours. He had his pistol, lying in wait in Loren's office, ready to end his life for what he'd done to his family. A photograph on his wall of the man's four-year-old daughter made him take pause, a little girl almost exactly Davey's age. She would grow up never knowing that her photo stopped him from murdering her father. It did not, however, stop him from burning the garage to the ground. Of course, he was suspected in the arson, but with no proof -- and given the circumstances -- the police and fire investigators looked the other way and ultimately left the case unsolved. Flat broke from the fire, Loren never worked as a mechanic again.
If there was one good thing that came from the tragedy, it was that Izaak discovered his love for cars. Before, they had simply been a means of transportation. Now, he wanted to know how they worked. He began to read and joined enthusiast clubs to learn everything he could about the automobile and eventually became a master mechanic in his own right.
Izaak was drafted into both the Korean and Vietnam wars, under his latest assumed identities. Although he declared himself as a conscientious objector, he had no qualms about serving, as long as he was placed in a non combat role. The Veterinary Corps was no longer needed on the battlefield. He was being considered for placement in the medical corps, but jumped at the chance to work as a mechanic in the motor pool when it was offered.
After returning from Vietnam, Izaak bounced from place to place within the Charlotte region, alternating and working for a few years each as a veterinarian, a farrier, and an auto mechanic. Over the past 25 years, he has assumed the role of devoted caregiver to his twin brother, Jakub, who now poses as his great-grandfather to help him hide his immortality from the prying eyes of the world around them.
