The Samuel and Selma Schwartz Family

In the late 1930s,  Rose Schwartz, a widow with one son, Samuel, married the widower Sam Bodek. He also had children from his previous marriage.

Samuel Schwartz (d. 1992) married Selma Marcus in April 1944, while he was stationed at the U.S. Army base at Fort Myers, Va. They met through the Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association. Schwartz edited the “Service Stripes” column published in the YM&WHA Weekly, and Marcus was a typist for the editorial department.

After returning from his service during World War II, Samuel Schwartz managed a liquor store and later served on the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Through the 1960s, Selma Schwartz often played the organ at community functions, including for meetings of the Squirrel Hill Chapter No. 442 of the Order of the Eastern Star, of which she was an officer.