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Friday May 23, 2008

Rose Goloboy, who survived pogroms to succeed as a lawyer, dies at 93

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Rose Goloboy’s story reads like a super-saturated amalgam of every Russian immigrant Jew’s worst hardships, crossed with a healthy dose of Horatio Alger.

She grew up in a Ukrainian shtetl called Zvill, where her most piercing childhood memory was the day Cossacks barged into her family’s dirt-floored shack, looking for Jewish men to press into the army. Rose’s brother, Dave, was hidden behind the fireplace. And the 5-year-old Rose had a piece of food crammed into her mouth to ensure she didn’t say anything to anyone.

Rose — born Rose Baram, which the folks at Ellis Island changed to Berman — died in Berkeley on May 13 at age 93 after hammering out her own, forceful version of the American Dream.

Guided by friendly Christians — for a fee — and working with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Rose’s family walked at nights to the Polish border and then all the way to Brussels, Belgium, to board a ship bound for America in 1920. Her 9-year-old cousin died on the trip.

She grew up in Chelsea, Mass., at the time a bustling town full of Jewish merchants in which Yiddish was shouted across main street. She met and married Isaac Brendze, a lawyer, and had two children. But Rose was not content to be a housewife, and many of the social trappings of town’s Jewish community held little interest for her.

“I think all of those childhood experiences made my mother very, very strong. She would never lose, let me tell you,” recalls her daughter, Marilyn Margulius.

“She was always very bright and very pretty — when I was 16 and we walked down the street, the truck drivers whistled at her, but not me. And, I think, she just made up her mind to become an American with credentials — no matter what.”

Rose graduated college and then earned a law degree, becoming an attorney in her husband’s office. Later, the couple bought and operated an old age home in Chelsea. Margulius remembers her mother fighting tooth and nail with the state to provide more money so she could purchase top-quality food for her residents (woe to the state of Mass-achusetts — Rose didn’t lose many battles).

Six months after Brendze died in 1984, Rose was spotted holding hands on the beach with Charlie Goloboy, another lawyer (the two had actually met in a parking lot dispute, but Goloboy didn’t stay mad long; men were always charmed by Rose).

They were married for about six years until he, too, died. In the meantime, the Goloboys had moved to Florida, but eight years ago, at age 85, Rose decided it wasn’t her scene. She moved to the Bay Area to be closer to her children, Margulius and Arthur Brendze. With her potent combination of charm and energy, she did just fine here.

“She interviewed every assisted-living place in the area and she liked one in Oakland. She convinced the guy there to let her stay a month for free, he liked her so much,” recalls Margulius.

“Later, she told him which floor and even which room she wanted and she waited until it was free. She ended up with a bay view. My mother was a most amazing character.”

Rose Berman Brendze Goloboy is survived by her sister, Minna Stone of Santa Barbara; daughter, Marilyn Margulius of Berkeley; son, Arthur Brendze of Sausalito; stepson, Bernie Goloboy of Marblehead, Mass.; three grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Donations in her memory can be sent to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 333 Seventh Ave., Floor 16, New York, NY 10004; The Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York, NY 10004; or Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA 94709.

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