Levinson

Written 2,500 years ago or more, Proverbs Chapter 31 describes a feminine ideal for Judaism — the woman of “valor” or “strength,” according to Bill Wallen, executive director of the Greater Altoona Jewish Federation.

Such a woman takes care of her home and family, yet serves the community — especially its needy members, Wallen said.

Bernice Levinson, a Philadelphia native who died Oct. 17 at 88, was such a woman, raising three sons in Altoona and serving 28 years as executive director of Improved Dwellings for Altoona — a nonprofit that has developed or managed 23 housing projects with more than 1,000 rental units serving low-to-moderate income people, according to Wallen.

Levinson’s community work encompassed much more than that: she was part of a group that created parodies of Broadway shows that ran at the Jewish Memorial Center, part of a Jewish Film Festival Committee, part of the group that created and ran the Blair County Civic Music Association; she was active in Big Brothers Big Sisters and in a local mental health association — a reflection of her own struggles with depression and her openness about it, Wallen said.

“(But) her legacy was IDA,” Wallen said.

She began as a volunteer in that organization, which was founded in 1968 by a coalition of eight faith and ethnic groups to create affordable housing in the aftermath of the decline of the local railroad industry, according to Wallen.

She worked her way up to the top staff post at a time when such organizations were dominated by men, said Wallen and Levinson’s friend Mickey Port.

Wallen said, “She was a role model.”

But the soft-spoken, sensitive “little redhead” managed with kindness, not confrontation, Port said.

At one point, she helped find housing for pregnant and parenting teens who were clients in a program operated by Port.

Landlords tended to be unwilling to rent to those clients, Port said.

Levinson helped “pave the way” for them, she said.

“She took a chance on these kids — youngsters who didn’t always know how to keep a home,” Port said.

And she treated them respectfully, as equals.

Her hiring policies at IDA helped provide advancement opportunities for people like the late Virginia Day, who became manager of the Evergreen Manors housing development in Eldorado — and who will be honored soon at an annual Blair County NAACP event, said Wallen, who served on the IDA board.

After she retired, Levinson enrolled at Penn State Altoona at 65 and earned a bachelor’s degree, majoring in English, minoring in Spanish, maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average.

“She followed her heart,” Wallen said.

In doing it, she became “buddies” with the younger students, Port said.

Arts supporters

While raising her family here, Levinson and her husband Howard were among a group of people interested in the arts, culture and music, said Elizabeth Plummer McGoldrick, an Altoona native.

They frequently got together at dinner parties, said Plummer McGoldrick, whose parents were part of the group — which included others besides the Levinsons who had come from bigger cities.

Among them were liberals and conservatives, Jews and Christians, rabbis and priests, Plummer McGoldrick said.

She was a kid, as were her friends, the Levinsons’ sons.

Those get-togethers created a “fabulous impression” on her, Plummer McGoldrick said.

There was no “discord,” she said. “They were the best times.”

Child of immigrants

Levinson grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, daughter of immigrant parents from Ukraine, in an apartment over the print shop her father operated, according to Plummer McGoldrick.

She came to Altoona in 1956 with Howard, a textile engineer with sportswear company Puritan.

The Levinsons returned to Philadelphia in 2004, where she and her husband lived in Rittenhouse Square.

Howard died in 2019.

Levinson was diagnosed with cancer, which doctors treated for a couple of years, until Levinson stopped treatment, because it became “too taxing on her system,” Wallen said.

“She knew the consequences,” he said.

Five months ago, on a rainy, chilly afternoon, Levinson was lying on a bed in her apartment, to ease the pain in her back.

Plummer McGoldrick was lying in a parallel bed, and they were doing the New York Times crossword puzzle together.

They’d work on the clues, erase mistakes, grab the paper from one another to scribble an entry and laugh.

It took three hours, but they got it done.

They had hot tea. “It was the most outstanding afternoon,” Plummer McGoldrick said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.