Senior Center Dedicated to Local Philanthropist

When social worker and philanthropist Edythe Kurz died last January at Nyack Hospital, her family were not the only ones who wept. According to her son Leonard Kurz, the nurses at the hospital, whom the elder Kurz got to know as she went in and out of the hospital for months before her death, felt grief after her death as well.

Kurz in fact had a great impact on many in the Rockland community, as demonstrated by the ceremony on Tuesday afternoon in which the Clarkstown/Pearl River Senior Center on West Nyack Road was renamed in Kurz’s honor. The dedication included the hanging of a plaque with Kurz’s name and picture on it.

Kurz was a founding director of the Kurz Family Foundation, which gives money to different charitable causes throughout Rockland, including the Rockland Family Shelter, the Martin Luther King Multipurpose Center, the Holocaust Museum and Study Center, and  Meals on Wheels, which runs five senior centers in Rockland, including the one on West Nyack Road.

“The Kurz Family Foundation has been very good to us through the years,” said Barbara Kohlhausen, President and CEO of Meals on Wheels in Rockland. “They’ve given us a lot of stock, and that’s helped us keep our programs going, and it’s helped us to grow our programs and make them better. And we’ve always wondered how we could ever thank them for all that they’ve done for us. I went to Edythe’s funeral, and I was so impressed, I didn’t know her, the way friends and family spoke about this woman and all she accomplished as a social worker in the world. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her, and I thought it would be a wonderful thing to have this center named after her and to say thank you to the Kurz family because they’ve been so good to us.”

The Senior Center is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and provides activities for local senior citizens. They play games like bingo, poker and dominos, listen to various speakers, and take trips to places like the Dollar Store and the Nanuet Farmers’ Market. They even go to Shop Rite a couple of times a week so the seniors can buy their groceries.

Vickie Falasca, manager of the Senior Center, noted that the Kurz Family Foundation has been very generous to the Center. She stated that some of the Foundation’s donations have gone towards a speaker system and a larger television. The television was particularly important because the previous set the Center had was small, so it was difficult for the visually impaired seniors to see it. But thanks to the Kurz Family Foundation’s donation, the Center was able to buy a larger set for watching the morning news and DVDs.

Edythe was born in Vermont in 1925 and then moved to Queens as a youth. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree, she returned to New York City to get a master’s from Columbia University School of Social Work. Soon after this she married Herbert Kurz, who founded Presidential Life, a Nyack-based insurance company, and the couple moved to Rockland in 1959.

Her son Leonard pointed out that though she became wealthy after marriage, Edythe grew up in a lower-income family. She thus never judged others by how much money they did or did not have.

“One thing she’s always say about money as I was growing up was it’s just money, and not to let that influence my thoughts on who that person is,” Kurz said. “I was honored when Meals on Wheels said ‘Would you be open to dedicating this room to your mother?’ because she would want to give back to the people.”

After the Kurzs moved to Rockland, Edythe worked for decades as a senior psychiatric case worker for the Whitehill Counseling Service of Westchester Jewish Community Services in White Plains. The organization now holds an annual conference in her name that discusses the latest topics of interest for human-service professionals.

In fact her impact on the WJCS was so great that some of her former colleagues, including Executive Director/CEO  Alan Trager, came out for the dedication.

“She was a really top-quality clinician, supervisor, and mentor to many people, and she was a highly-respected and well-liked colleague to us for many, many years,” Trager said of Edythe Kurz.

Not only did Kurz work for WJCS for decades, but even after she retired she continued to give money to the organization. Now the Foundation provides funds to bring in speakers and give paid internships to minority students training at the organization.

And Leonard Kurz added that even in the last years of his mother’s life, when she was struggling with lung disease, she still found time to help others.

“Even then she would befriend young people,” he said. “She wasn’t their therapist, but she had her way, she helped people in their lives.”