Obituaries

Stanley Dick, 86, of Cambridge, MA, died unexpectedly on March 8th, 2023.  Known as Uncle Stanley to so many, he leaves behind a large family who loved and respected him, starting with five nieces and nephews:  Janice (Robert) Peterson of Newton, MA.;  Jack (Marguerite) Fischer of Berkeley Springs, WV;  Jonathan (Deborah) Fischer of Great River, NY;   Eric (Miriam) Fischer of Chesapeake, VA; and Susan (David) Weis of Northfield, NJ.  In addition, he is survived by 13 grand nieces and nephews, and 9 great grand nieces and nephews.   He was preceded in death by his parents, Jack and Lillian Dick (of Brooklyn, NY), his sister and brother-in-law, Annette and Steve Fischer (of Cedarhurst, NY), and his brother and sister-in-law, Irving and Rona Dick (of Whitestone, NY).

Stanley was a remarkable man, excelling in so many aspects of his life.  He graduated summa cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1956, and he went on to get his PhD in Biology from Harvard University in 1960.  He did two years of post-doc work in Germany and London, and he even spent one summer in Costa Rica, doing research in the field of fungal genetics.

He went on to have a long and successful career as a college professor, at both Indiana University and Fitchburg State College in MA, where for many terms, he served as the chairman of the biology department.   He also spent many summers at the University of Wisconsin, collaborating with friend and colleague Thomas J. Leonard on several published research papers.  Perhaps most importantly, he was a trusted advisor to graduate students – and many of these students then went on to their own distinguished careers.

Stanley was also passionate about languages.  His talent in this area became obvious early on, when he came in second place in a NYC French competition, competing with thousands of other HS students. He spoke more than a half dozen languages fluently – and he also studied an impressive number of  languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian, Yiddish, even Farsi and Sanskrit!  Friends and family were in awe regarding his language skills.  He audited many a language course at Harvard – and wherever he was, he’d have a language book with him, so that he could use any free time to study one language or another.  This habit lasted for his entire life – he never lost his passion for languages!

And one can’t neglect to mention Stanley’s love of travel.  For a very long time, he would spend the entire summer abroad, particularly in Europe and Scandinavian countries.  He also spent a summer in Japan.   Because he was so fluent in languages, and because of the way he just settled into a relaxed schedule, he really was not just a tourist, but more like a temporary citizen of that country.

Something else that defined Stanley was his love of opera and classical music.  When he was quite young, he took piano lessons from his new sister-in-law, Rona Dick.   He played viola in his HS orchestra, and then he went on to study the cello with a private teacher.  He lent his excellent baritone voice to many a semi-pro chorus, particularly the Lexington Masterworks Chorale and Chorus Pro Musica.   He deeply loved opera – and he got some amazing chances to perform in opera choruses.  He liked to joke that he once sang on the same stage as Joan Sutherland!!  :)))   And for the last ten years or so, he attended the yearly  Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Boston’s Jordan Hall – a day he always looked forward to.

After a lifetime of travel, music and teaching, Stanley settled into a quieter routine.  He loved doing the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle, up until the day he passed away.   He also had a great fondness for Turner Classic Movies.  He had a freezer full of blintzes, and he was content with his calm and quiet routine.

Most of all – he loved keeping in touch with his large family, and he always  appreciated any help that was given to him.   He celebrated his 80th birthday in great style, at a HUGE family gathering in Great River, NY.   He couldn’t get over how many of his relatives attended – but it was just a mark of how loved he was by his family.  He also leaves behind two very long time friends – Stanley Krane and Phil Bibb – and they were kind enough to lend their memories to this writing.

Stanley was buried in a family plot, on March 15th, 2023, at the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, NY.  He lived a good, full life, and he will be greatly missed.

Jefferson Radin Bender of California and Massachusetts, passed away on March 8, 2023. Born to the late Jefferson Robert Bender and Lilian Cecelia Bender (née Radin) in 1934, he was prepared at Lawrence Academy before graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, he lived in Winthrop House and was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club studying Anthropology and French. He later served in the U.S. Army. After working in the financial sector with mutual funds, he moved to his mother’s native California in 1974 to participate in the family business. At the age 38, he immersed himself into one of his biggest loves: music. He eventually became a renowned pianist and banjoist in the styles of New Orleans Revival Jazz and Ragtime and played with bands in the San Francisco Bay such as The Magnolia Jazz Band, one of the premier ensembles in the area. He additionally served on the board of Directors for the University Club of Palo Alto, The Foothill-De Anza Community College, and the Music Guild at Stanford University.

He will be remembered for his profound and curious intellect, his musical talents, his affinity for technical gadgetry and tinkering, and his love for his family.

He is survived by his beloved daughter, Jennifer E. Bender and his grandchildren, Carlos-Henri Ferré, and Elizabeth-Isolina Ferré.

Services are strictly private

One by one the decades passed — 70 years in all from the day 14-year-old Michael Gruenbaum left the Terezin concentration camp in 1945 until he could share the story of Nazis shattering his childhood in Czechoslovakia and how he dodged death four times.

“A big responsibility comes with surviving the Holocaust — the responsibility to remember, to tell, and to never forget,” he said in “The Teddy Bear,” a short film his grandson Benjamin animated.

With “Somewhere There Is Still a Sun,” a memoir Mr. Gruenbaum wrote in his 80s, and through countless visits to classrooms in person and on Zoom, he kept alive his family’s memories of heartbreak, courage, and the fierce will to stay alive.

“I challenge you to find ways to use the lessons of the Holocaust to fix what’s broken in the world,” he said in the animated film, which was produced by the Lappin Foundation and is taught in classrooms across the country. “Making the world a better place starts with you.”

Mr. Gruenbaum taught two lessons on Zoom the day before he died of heart failure Wednesday. He was 92 and living independently in Brookline, his home for many years.

In Terezin during World War II, Mr. Gruenbaum and his older sister, Marietta, survived because their mother, Margaret Popper Gruenbaum, was talented and kept them off trains to Auschwitz, where Nazis killed about 1 million Jewish people.

Before the war, their family had led a prosperous life in Prague. The first three times the Gruenbaums were summoned to go on the train, “my mother went to the people that were preparing the list and reminded them of all of the things that my father had done for the Jewish community. That was the main reason why we were pulled out,” Mr. Gruenbaum said in an interview with The Defiant Requiem Foundation.

Margaret was among those at Terezin who were ordered to make teddy bears as Christmas presents for the children of a Nazi officer in fall 1944.

When Margaret learned that she and her children were again on the list for the train to Auschwitz, she told her boss that if she left, the teddy bears order “would not get filled,” Mr. Gruenbaum recalled in a 2020 Globe essay.

Her boss explained that to the German officer, who allowed the Gruenbaums to stay.

“The officer said: ‘Pull them out too, but no one else,’ ” Mr. Gruenbaum wrote. “And thus, due to my mother’s persistence and a lot of luck, I am here today to tell this incredible story.”

His mother kept one of the bears she made, which he inherited after she died in 1974. The bear, called Sasha, is dressed in a jacket Margaret sewed in Terezin.

“I’m here because of this teddy bear, Sasha,” he said in the animated film. “Sasha saved my life during the Holocaust.”

Born on Aug. 23, 1930, Misa Grünbaum grew up in Prague hoping to become a professional soccer player. (His name was changed years later, after arriving in America.)

Misa’s father, Karl, was a prominent attorney employed by one of the country’s wealthiest families.

“I remember cuddling in bed with my parents on Sunday mornings,” he told The Defiant Requiem Foundation. “I read the sports section while my parents read about the latest political developments.”

In 1939, Germany began its occupation of Czechoslovakia, a day Mr. Gruenbaum never forgot.

“I was sitting in a window and I watched this couple across the street on a roof holding hands, and they jumped off and committed suicide,” he told the foundation. “That was a bad sign of all the things that were coming.”

The family had to surrender all belongings and money to the Nazis, move into a small apartment in the Prague ghetto, and wear yellow Star of David patches, which made them targets for beatings.

In 1941, the Gestapo arrested, tortured, and murdered Mr. Gruenbaum’s father for having helped his clients transfer money out of Czechoslovakia before the Nazis took over.

The following year, not long after Michael turned 12, he and his mother and sister were sent to Terezin. Separated from Margaret and Marietta, he was assigned to a dormitory room with about 40 other boys — most were killed or died of illnesses.

While they lived there, 20-year-old Francis Maier “tried to educate us, surreptitiously,” Mr. Gruenbaum told the foundation.

“Once in a while he brought somebody in to give us a lecture about history, physics, or something like that,” he added. “Of course we had to have somebody be a lookout, to make sure no Germans would come and find that out.”

After the war, he returned to Prague, but his mother suspected the Soviet Union would soon make living there unsafe. She took him to Paris and then Cuba, where they waited for a visa to enter the United States.

Mr. Gruenbaum went to an American high school in Havana, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, and received a master’s in urban planning from Yale University.

While working in Illinois after MIT, he met Thelma Yutan at a Chicago performance of Handel’s “Messiah.”

They married in 1956, settled in Brookine, and raised three sons. Mr. Gruenbaum worked for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the state department of public works, and the Bruce Campbell & Associates consulting firm.

Thelma Gruenbaum, a writer, interviewed her husband and others he knew in the concentration camp and wrote “Nesarim: Child Survivors of Terezin.”

“In just one more generation, the world will have to rely on the written word or testimonial tapes to learn about the Holocaust,” she wrote.

Mrs. Gruenbaum finished and published the book in 2004, after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She died in 2006.

“They had a true love affair,” said their son David of Santa Rosa, Calif.

His father, he added, “was an incredible person. Because of his experience in the concentration camp, he was just optimistic for the rest of his life. He just knew things couldn’t get worse than that.”

Mr. Gruenbaum “taught us this persistence: ‘You should never give up on going after what you want,’ ” said his son Peter of Seattle. “No one could do it to the level that he did. That was a powerful lesson we all took from him.”

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Upon publishing “Somewhere There Is Still a Sun,” its title inspired by a line in a letter Mr. Gruenbaum’s mother wrote after they were liberated from Terezin, he worked to get his memoir translated into 19 languages.

At the end of his life, as violent incidents of antisemitism increased in the United States, “it was very important to him to get the book out as much as possible,” said his son Leon of New York City, who has seen YouTube videos of schoolchildren presenting book reports about his father’s memoir.

“He had an indomitable spirit,” Leon said.

A private service will be held for Mr. Gruenbaum, who in addition to his sons and grandson Benjamin leaves three other grandchildren.

Mr. Gruenbaum believed constant vigilance is needed to prevent the murderous hatred he saw as a boy from engulfing the world again.

“It starts with a simple drawing of a swastika on a wall, then the overturning of Jewish gravestones, the bullying of Jewish students, culminating in the killing of innocent worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue and diners in a deli in Jersey City,” he wrote for the Globe.

“It behooves all of us to be very much on the alert and make sure that the smallest of such incidents is immediately thwarted and stopped in its tracks.”

Warren Gordon Miller of Chestnut Hill passed away on March 8, 2023 after a brief illness, surrounded by his family.  He is survived by his loving wife, Norma and his cherished children David (Linda), Betsy (Douglas) and Debra, and his grandchildren Philip, Claire and Mitchell.  For 65 years, he practiced law with integrity and honesty.  He was passionate about sailing and fine woodworking.  A graveside service will be held at Sharon Memorial Park on Sunday, March 12,2023 at 1:45 pm.  Remembrances may be sent to Dana Farber.

Brunswick, Arlyne (Stone), passed away peacefully on March 7, 2023. Beloved wife of the late Sumner Brunswick. Devoted mother of Sharon Logan and her husband Rich, Wendy Shulman and her husband Bill, and the late Lenny Brunswick. Proud Mimi of Stephanie and Susannah Logan, and Sophie and Simon Shulman.  Services are private. In lieu of flowers, donations in Arlyne’s memory may be made to Better Day Adult Day Program, 195 Reservoir St., Marlborough, MA 01752 or Hebrew Senior Life, 1200 Centre St., Boston, MA 02131.

5 June 1934, 11:27 a.m. (22 Sivan 5794) – 7 March 2023, 10:38 a.m. (14 Adar 5783)

To view the livestream of the service please click here.

Eleanor Levingston, of Lexington and Needham. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts to Birdie (Wollner) and Jacob Clebnik. Graduated Lynn English HS, attended Mary Burnham, Howard Seminary, Russell Sage College, graduating from Boston University in 1955. Married in 1957 to Howard Levingston, who predeceased her in 2020. Proud mother and mother-in-law of David, Rabbi Judd (Dr. Hillary Kruger), and Scott (Dr. Amy) Levingston; proud grandmother of Ivan (Lily), Miranda, Serena, Zaccary, and Olivia. Eleanor loved classical music, and played cello and piano.  She was a top notch editor and administrator and worked in private corporations and at the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee. Funeral services will take place at Temple Emunah, Lexington, on Wednesday,  March 8, 2023 at 11:00 AM. Burial will be with close family only at Shirat HaYam Cemetery (Beth-El Section), Peabody. Shiva information is available from family members and the Germantown Jewish Centre. At her request, donations in her memory may go to The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (www.ushmm.org/) in Washington; Yad LaKashish (www.lifeline.org.il) or the Pine Street Inn (pinestreetinn.org), Boston.

Rosenberg, Rosabelle “Rose” (Ostroff), age 96, of Newton, MA passed away March 5, 2023. Born in Uniontown, PA to the late Edward and Dora (Kramer) Ostroff. Beloved wife of the late Udel K. Rosenberg and dear companion of the late Sampson Grunes. Mother of Ira J. and Mimi Rosenberg, and the late Ellen Ann Rosenberg. Grandmother of Claire, Aaron, Jonathan, and Roni Rosenberg. Sister of the late Edith Tobias, the late Jeannette Steinberg, and the late Morris Ostroff. Brilliant, beautiful, and overly modest, she sang leads in school musicals, read and typed at extraordinary speeds, and did the NY Times crosswords in pen. She served as president of the Women’s division of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and remained as secretary of the board of the Mass. Division of the National society for years after her term concurrent with the presidency ended; she was also honored as volunteer of the year multiple times. Services at Sharon Memorial Park, Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 1:45 pm. Donations may be made to the American Heart Association, 300 5^th Ave., Suite 6, Waltham, MA 02451.

Keller, Sylvia (Savitz) of Brookline, MA passed away March 5, 2023 surrounded by her family. Beloved wife of the late Joseph (George) P. Keller. Devoted mother of James Keller and Jane Keller.  Proud grandmother of Sydney, Jack, and Degife Keller. Loving sister of Elliot Savitz and his wife Lesley and the late Alan Savitz and his wife Maxine. Adored matriarch of the entire Savitz family. Graveside service at Lindwood Memorial Park, 497 North Street, Randolph, MA on Monday, March 6, 2023 at 2:00 pm. Following interment, memorial observance will be held for close family and friends. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Robert (“Bob”) Fishman of Natick, MA formerly of Weston, MA and Singer Island, FL passed away March 3, 2023, surrounded by his family. Bob was the son of the late Morris and Dora Fishman.  He grew up in Dorchester and Newton, MA with his brother Harold and sister Francis. Bob graduated high school from Boston Latin, class of 1957 and earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, class of 1961.

Following college, Bob joined his family’s business, Standard Uniform and Clayton Manufacturing, where he played an active role in the company. Following the sale of the family business, Bob successfully pursued a number of entrepreneurial ventures and real-estate development projects.  He was a member of Young Presidents’ Organization and served as the president of YPO’s alumni organization, the 49ers.  Later in his career, he earned a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School and served on a number of volunteer boards.

Bob had a zest for life and was devoted to his family.  He loved to travel and bring his extended family on fun-filled vacations; he was an avid skier until late in life; Bob and his beloved wife Bobbi spent many fun summers in Newport, RI where they delighted in visits from family members, frequently dined out and enjoyed the beach and ocean.  After selling their vacation home in Newport, they became “snowbirds” spending summers in Weston and winters on Singer Island, all the while enjoying frequent visits from their adoring children and extended families.

Bob was a beloved husband of Roberta (Caras) Fishman; devoted father of Audrey, Eric and Peter and father-in-law of Peter and Coleen; cherished grandfather of Rebecca, Jake, Max, and Charlie; and just recently became a very proud great grandfather to Stella and Nora.

Services will be held at Congregation Beth El, 105 Hudson Rd., Sudbury, MA on Monday, March 6, 2023 at 11 am. A link to view the livestream can be found here. Following interment at Sharon Memorial Park, memorial observance will be at the home of Peter Fishman until 8:30pm and on Tuesday 1-4pm & 6-8:30pm.  In lieu of flowers, donations in Robert’s memory may be made to Parkinson’s Foundation (https://www.parkinson.org/).

Harris (Harry) Cohen died peacefully on March 3, 2023. He is survived by his beloved wife of 58 years, Rona Ginsburg Cohen. Harry was a devoted father to his son and daughter-in-law, Fred Cohen and Heidi Rubin Cohen, as well as his daughter and son-in-law, Lynne and Robert Koreman. He was an exceedingly proud grandfather to Samantha Koreman.

Harry grew up in Woburn, MA and, after achieving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Boston University, went into the construction business with his father building more than 200 apartments and homes in Woburn. He later spent 30 years running Ginn Oil company, also in Woburn, before retiring in 2000. Harry never left his builder skills wither. He was a lifelong resource to his family and friends because he could fix just about anything.

Harry was a member of Rotary for more than 50 years and was recognized as a Paul Harris Fellow three times. He was an avid Boston sports fan, a lover of fine dining, and an excellent chef in his own right.

Harry and Rona, long time Lexington residents, moved to Burlington in 2016. They were members of Temple Emunah for more than 50 years.

A private graveside burial service will be held. The family will host a gathering March 6, 2023 at the Clubhouse at Seven Springs – 1 Seven Springs Lane Burlington, MA 01803 from 3:00PM – 5:00PM. Masks required.

In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made in his name to the MSPCA or the Jimmy Fund.