Grandfather and Grandmother Wool
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Samuel Greenberg (1891-1989) immigrated to Pittsburgh about 1910 from near Kiev to join an uncle who had immigrated earlier. After becoming a citizen in 1920, Greenberg repaired machinery at a Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh, worked in the wholesale egg business and sold insurance. He retired from the Prudential Insurance Company.
In 1915, Samuel Greenberg married Esther Wool (1893-1978), a dressmaker he had known as a child growing up in Ukraine. They had two daughters, Anna and Bertha.
Anna “Ann” Greenberg (d.2013) graduated from Schenley High School before going to business school. She worked for the Veterans Administration in Pittsburgh as a medical transcriptionist and office worker for 34 years until 1978, when she began working part time at Carnegie Mellon University. She retired in 1991. She financially supported the arts, education and social services and gave $100,000 to the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences to establish the Bertha G. Louik Endowed Scholarship for library students.
Bertha Greenberg (d. 2003) graduated from Schenley High School and attended the University of Pittsburgh on a scholarship she won in an essay contest. She married Leonard Louik in 1942. They lived in Washington, D.C., during World War II, where she worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When they returned to Pittsburgh, Bertha Louik worked at the Post-Gazette and later as a substitute teacher. In the 1960s, Anna convinced Bertha to return to school for a degree in library science. After earning her degree in 1969, Bertha worked as a reference librarian, first at Chatham College and then, for 20 years until her retirement, at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
