Melvin Rabinowitz

Drawn by his love of science and mathematics to the aerospace industry at the dawning of supersonic flight as well as the exploration of outer space, his accomplishments involved significant contributions to high performance aircraft, moon landing and the international space station.

Mr. Rabinowitz was born in the Bronx, New York in 1936 and grew up in the Crotona Park section where he attended James Monroe High School. He earned a bachelor of electrical engineering degree at age twenty at the Uptown campus of the City College of New York and, in 1963, a master of business administration degree at the downtown Baruch campus. He also completed, in 1980, the renowned Program for Senior Executives at the Sloan School of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was a member of the adjunct faculty of the State University of New York (Farmingdale).

After diverse engineering positions at the Instrument Corporation of America (Garden City, NY) and at Sperry Gyroscope Corporation (Syosset, NY), the major portion of his professional career was spent at Grumman Aerospace Corporation (Bethpage, NY), now Northrop Grumman, where he was Director of Business Operations and, ultimately, Director of Human Resources.

Mr. Rabinowitz's strongest asset was always the ability to communicate; whether responsible for writing major proposals for new business pursuits, or, for the ability to listen to employees’ concerns and provide a passionate voice for their interests. During the massive Grumman down-sizing between 1985 and 1995, when the jobs of almost ten thousand people were eliminated, Mr. Rabinowitz was determined to assure fairness and at the same time harmoniously balance

diversity concerns in the personnel reduction processes. This advocacy often occasioned management conflict which he was persuasively able to resolve.

The community interests and commitments of Mr. Rabinowitz were amaranthine. He was President as well as Treasurer of the Harbour Villas Association, a planned-unit development at Northport, NY where he lived until his death. Mr. Rabinowitz was a past president of the E. Northport (NY) Jewish Center, a member of the Board of Directors of the United Synagogues of America, and the founding president of the Chai Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Yiddish language and culture. After his retirement in 1995 and a near-fatal automobile accident one year later, he was able to continue his community involvement on the Board of Directors of the Arthritis Foundation of Long Island and, to continue to cultivate his broad interest in the arts by becoming a Docent at the Heckscher Museum of Art (Huntington, NY); later, a member of their Board of Directors. His passion for Grand Opera led him to opera houses in New York, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Capetown, Paris, Venice, Budapest and Prague.

Mr. Rabinowitz is survived by his wife of 66 years, Myrna, a retired teacher of English; two sons, Mark (Kathleen McGarry) of Hanover, New Hampshire and Los Angeles, California, and Jay (Anna Kuchel) of New York City; and a daughter, Lynn Fisher (Michael) of Forest Hills, NY. Another daughter, Julia Shakter (Richard), pre-deceased him. He had four grandchildren: Henry, Lucy, Zoe and Zachary. His brother is Jerome Randall (Barbara) of Lake Worth, FL, and his brother Albert (Rhoda) pre-deceased him.

Donations may be made to the charity of your choice.

Shiva will be Thursday through Sunday.