She told him B+ or A. And for the next two years he buckled down and received Bs and B+s. As Lil says, “If you reach out, you accomplish something. You see that someone is learning. You fill in where someone tried but the kids weren’t interested. You turn someone on. And if you can do this, my God, isn’t it wonderful! You’ve saved a soul!”
The roots of ‘Menschdom’
Lil was born in Brooklyn of Russian immigrant parents in a home where great emphasis was placed on doing the right thing and being a
mensch, a good person. The best way to achieve
menschdom is to help people who cannot help you; help with no expectation of return; help many people (if only in small ways); do the right thing the right way; and pay back society.
This is Lil’s credo.
She learned to help others when she was a child. Her father had an automotive supply business, and on weekends when he called on customers who owned service stations (many from the “old country” that he had helped set up in business), Lil would accompany him and give out free glasses when the station had a promotion.
She was the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Ohio University and worked for Shell Oil in Texas for five years. When her father died, she returned to New York, worked part time for Shell, married a dentist from Philadelphia, raised a family and tutored kids in the neighborhood, then taught math at the Abington Penn State Campus for 20 years.
Word from the wise
“My greatest pleasure, besides Sit and Stitch and Shmaltz, is doing things with and for other people,” Lil says. “If you’re just sitting in your apartment watching the ‘boob tube,’ and worrying about yourself and wondering when your children are going to invite you to their house, you’re just wasting your time.
“You have to be involved in something that involves you, and everybody knows how to do something (besides going out clothes shopping, which I hate to do).”
In addition to Lil, we extend kudos to the following Ann’s Choice residents who volunteer in the Centennial School District and may be that one person who changes a youngster’s life: Miriam Beswick, Howard Bennett, George Schneider, Richard DeKalb, Mary Longman, Doris Kalan, Lydia Gooding, Gussie Chudnoff, Phyllis Donzanti, Gerald Connell, and Manual Miller.
As Winston Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get and a life by what we give.”