Mary Kurin, resident of Hebrew Home in Rockville, Maryland passed away at the age of 99 on February 26, 2021 as a result of complications from pneumonia. She had recently won her battle with Covid-19 but likely suffered its respiratory after-effects.
Mary was born near Iasi, Romania in 1921, and journeyed with her mother Dina as an infant across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada, following her father Sol Myrovitch, who sought opportunities away from war-torn anti-Semitic Eastern Europe.
The family settled in Montreal, and Mary learned French. The family later moved to the Bronx, New York, where Mary attended Morris High School. Like many women she went to work during World War II. Through the Romanian-Jewish network, she accepted a blind date, meeting merchant marine Saul Kurin who was on shore-leave in New York. The couple quickly fell in love and married in 1943. They exchanged love letters while Kurin traversed the world, worrying he’d never return to his bride.
He did and they began to build their life together. After years of trying Mary became pregnant and gave birth to her first son, Richard, and four years later, her second son Malcolm. The couple moved from the South Bronx to Whitestone, Queens. While her husband worked in the garment industry, and as cab and truck driver, Mary went back to work. She served as a bookkeeper for Parade Dress Company for decades, helping pay the family’s bills and put her boys through college. Even as a working woman commuting three or more hours a day from Queens to the garment center in Manhattan via bus and subway, she shopped, cleaned, knitted and cooked for her family—favorite dishes being sweet & sour meatballs, blintzes and noodle pudding. Mary was a dedicated mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, grandmother, great-aunt and friend. She was a perpetual worrier, and always a family peace-maker—trying to bring people together. She enjoyed hosting gatherings for the extended family, playing mah-jong with her friends, and even taking an occasional modest vacation to the Catskills or to New England. She served the community for various causes, ranging from awareness drives for hemophilia—an affliction of her nephew, to activities with the synagogue sisterhood.
She and her husband retired, and helped with Malcolm’s business and with the care of their grandchildren Jeremy and Sarah. Mary and Saul moved to Sunrise, Florida near her sister Sylvia and brother-in-law Stanley where they prospered as members of the community and hosted annual visits from their sons’ families. Mary helped sell real estate, and became a fabulous bowler—an unlikely grandmother racking up scores of over 200 and winning numerous contests. She also began producing beautiful needlepoints, eventually numbering about a dozen. They enjoyed shows and performances at Sunrise Lakes club house and in the area, took a cruise or two, and experienced a poignant trip to Israel for their 50th anniversary. The couple would often visit Malcolm’s family in Delaware and just about every summer visit their son Richard and his wife Allyn and their daughters Danielle and Jaclyn in northern Virginia and volunteer at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, often selling crafts, t-shirts and jewelry in the sales tent.
Saul died in 2002 and Mary moved in 2008 to Ring House in Rockville, MD. She became a very close friend to granddaughter Jaclyn who lived and worked nearby. The two would spend hours together almost daily, playing Rummy-O, conversing, and joking. Though she feared dogs, she made an exception for Jaclyn’s beloved shih tzu Kipu. Mary loved picnics, barbeques and crab & shrimp feasts in her son’s backyard often with Allyn’s family. As she aged, Mary moved over to Hebrew Home, making friends, talking often to her niece Marilyn, enjoying visits from her sons, and annual get-togethers with her beloved brother Manny and his wife Temmy—who became her well-appreciated clothier.
In recent months Nana, as she came to be known by all in the extended family, was animated about the presidential campaign, insisting that she be registered to vote and voted by mail anxious to elect Joe Biden. She was afflicted with Covid—but survived and then received her vaccination. Days before her demise she was buoyed by a long phone call with Danielle and looked forward to again playing Rummy-O with Jaclyn. For the first time in a year she was set to get her hair done at the Hebrew Home salon. She was so excited that it would make her look and feel like “a million bucks!”
That was not to be. A day later she was taken to Suburban Hospital where she was very well treated. Her condition though declined, and she returned to Hebrew Home for hospice services, surrounded by her needlepoints, family photographs, touchstones of her life and the wonderful, caring Hebrew Home staff. She passed on. Local arrangements were made by Torchinsky Hebrew Funeral Home in Washington, D.C. She now joins her beloved husband Saul, interred at the Star of David Memorial Gardens in North Lauderdale, Florida.
The family confident that she will be looking down from heaven and watching over them with deserved grace and well-earned pride.
Mary Kurin is survived by her son Richard and his family, son Malcom and his family, her brother Manny and wife Temmy, her sister Shirley and her husband Artie, her many nieces, nephews and their families, and her in-laws. The family has asked that donations to honor Mary Kurin be made to the Hebrew Home https://www.smithlifecommunities.org/giving/make-a-donation/ and to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival https://support.si.edu/site/Donation2?df_id=21386&21386.donation=form1&s_src=redirect-17664
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