Celebrating 71 years and still going strong
A LIFETIME OF LOVE
by Ruth Osborn
managing editor
Helene and Mort Goldberg, 30-plus-year residents of Mutual 14, will celebrate 71 years of marriage tomorrow. They will be surrounded by family—son Marshall, daughters Linda and Jeanne, and lots grandchildren. There will be cake and memories.
The couple was married on June 4, 1950, in Duquesne, Pennsylvania. It was a day in the middle of the year in the middle of a century.
But that Sunday was the start of a long and love-filled union.
Helene’s father, Rabbi Morris Moskowitz, married the couple. Rabbi Moskowitz came to this country from Hungary after serving in the Hungarian Army in World War I. He and his wife, Lena, immigrated to Pennsylvania, moving to Duquesne in 1934. There, he served as a rabbi at Congregation Beth Jacob, where Helene and Mort wed.
They first met at one of the many young men’s and women’s clubs that spread out from Pittsburgh to surrounding steel towns like Duquesne.
Mort was ready to settle down after serving as a U.S. Army medic in World War II. He was 18 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and was inducted on March 22, 1943.
By June 1950, times were good for starting married life. America stood at the summit of the world, as the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described it. The economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity— new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods—were available to more people than ever before. Women were wearing full swingy skirts, thanks to designer Christian Dior, and trendy men were beginning to grease back their hair and sport narrow trousers and velvet-collared jackets.
Jukeboxes were playing Nat King Cole, Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers, and Bing Crosby, and lots of people were watching “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
The Goldbergs settled into married life. They both worked, raised three children and traveled when they could.
The years went by easy. “We just like each other. We agreed on almost everything,” said Helene. “We did everything we could together.
“I can’t speak for him, but I like him in addition to loving him,” she added, smiling at Mort, who responded with a robust, “You’re wonderful.”
After they met at the Young Men’s and Women’s Hebrew Association a couple of times, Mort asked for Helene’s phone number. She gave it to him with alacrity.
“He was gorgeous, adorable, very blond and blue-eyed,” she recalled.
PoorMortlosthernumber,but not to be derailed, he canvassed 5th Street—where he thought she lived—and asked if anyone knew a Helene Moskowitz.
He had no luck.
Probably because Helene lived two streets away, on 7th.
But all was not lost. Where sheer determination failed, the fates intervened.
She was leaving the club one day, when out of a phone booth popped Mort. He had been trying to reach her.
“That was it,” said Helene. “I never dated anyone else again, and neither did he.”
The couple announced their engagement on his birthday, Feb. 12, 1950, and they were married four months later.
They are happy to celebrate 71 years with their dear ones in person. Everyone has been vaccinated. Seeing those faces will be a gift, but they are grateful for FaceTime and other technology that have kept them connected to the world and people, even from home. Because home is where life mostly happens now, as they are fragile, said Helene: “We see the world from here,” and it’s a beautiful world when you are sharing it with your one-and-only.
