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It took a village to compile memories

Many people had a hand in a book of tributes that stirs emotions and raises money for Weinberg Village.

Kay Jacobs and Ellie Tepper have worked on dozens of fundraising projects, but nothing has been as rewarding as their latest effort for Weinberg Village, an assisted living facility run by the Tampa Jewish Community Center/Federation on its 21-acre Gunn Highway campus.

Selling pages in a tribute book to mark Weinberg Village's 10th anniversary turned the two South Tampa women into unofficial historians.

"We began to realize we had created a pictorial history of the Jewish community," Jacobs said.

Honor Thy Fathers and Thy Mothers binds nearly 100 tributes into 96 pages. Jacobs, Tepper and 250 other guests saw the book for the first time Sunday night at a 10th anniversary gala dinner for Weinberg Village at the Avila estate of Christel and Mark Yaffe.

Searching for cherished childhood and wedding photographs and writing the tributes awakened memories for many people, said Jacobs of Culbreath Bayou.

"The stories are so lovingly told," Tepper added. "How people met, started businesses, came to this country, survived the Holocaust. They were humorous, inspiring and very touching."

Weinberg Village president Judith Mish provided a 1936 wedding photo of her parents and described the day her father got out of a taxi in front of the Astor Hotel in New York. He saw a brunet on the balcony and told a buddy, "I am going to marry her." They danced all night and married two years later.

Barbara Garrett and her sister Anne Kantor, who chaired Sunday's dinner, wrote about their parents, Lillian Rippa and "Doc" Einbinder. Their mother grew up in Ybor City, where their father was the first Jewish dentist.

David Scher, the first president of Weinberg Village, was born in Ireland because his Lithuanian grandparents got off their U.S.-bound boat when it stopped in Cork. They thought they were in New York.

Dentist Carl Zielonka's tribute, for example, recalls how his parents, Rabbi David and Carol Zielonka, came to Tampa in 1930 as newlyweds to lead a synagogue of 40 families on a salary of $300 a month.

"Over and over, I heard how it stimulated conversations and memories," said Jacobs, who was delighted with the response to the project.

The book raised $55,000 for the retirement community, which serves Jewish and non-Jewish senior citizens. A full page sold for $1,000, a half-page was $600 and a two-page spread went for $1,800.

Graphic designer Sergio Waksman designed and produced the book of sepia prints. His wife, Karen, coordinated the project.

"It's different ... because there are no ads at all," she said. "Only tributes and an index of the people who did the honoring. And it's only the beginning, Volume One."

Jacobs borrowed, and broadened, a concept from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee in Nashville. That publication, A Celebration of Women, The Power of the Purse, raises money for the foundation's Women's Fund.

In addition to Scher, four other past presidents were thanked at the gala: Saul Rachelson, Sharon Cross, Doug Cohn and Barry Karpay.

The highlight of the evening was Kantor's announcement that the gala proceeds completed the necessary fundraising to match a $1-million challenge grant from the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation of Baltimore. The grant will establish an endowment fund to sponsor some of the 80 people who cannot otherwise afford to live at Weinberg Village.

A grant from the Weinberg Foundation in 1995 was used to convert a former drug rehab center into Tampa's only kosher assisted living facility.

- For a copy of the book, e-mail wbvtributebook@jewishtampa.com Amy Scherzer can be reached at scherzer@sptimes.com or 813 226-3332.