Flashback 2005: Irvin Goldberg, 80; helped found Bellwood Boys and Girls Club

     My father-in-law, Irvin Goldberg, was born on Aug. 1, 1924, 100 years ago today. Tonight we're hosting the kind of low-key family gathering he loved — an ice cream social. I thought I should share the obituary of him below, for the edification of those new to the clan who never had the pleasure of meeting him. Nice guys have the reputation of being creampuffs, but Irv was a rare blend of kind and tough. He drove a tank during World War II. Afterward, he ran a business bending metal tubes into chairs and table bases. "I later discovered," I used to say, "that machines were involved."

    What I remember most about writing this obit is that, while I knew Irv had founded the Bellwood Boys Club — I had spoken at one of their fundraisers, and he had some kind of medal framed on the wall — I didn't realize exactly what that meant in real human terms until I phoned the club, and ended up talking to someone who shed tears, explaining how Irv Goldberg had saved his life. He touched a lot of lives, including mine, and almost 20 years after his death, I remember him as a rock, a pole star still to those of us fortunate enough to have known him.

     Most people would have stopped volunteering at the Bellwood Boys and Girls Club when they moved away from Bellwood. But Irvin Goldberg was not most people. For 30 years after he and his family left Bellwood for Skokie, he returned to what is now the Boys and Girls Club of West Cook County to help the kids and the club.
     "Everything about his life was about helping someone else," said Ed Sheehan, the current executive director, who as a child of 8 joined the club and met Mr. Goldberg. "In all the years I've known him, I don't think he performed a selfish act. I don't think he performed a selfish act in his whole life."
     Mr. Goldberg, a man of uncommon generosity, died Sunday in Skokie at age 80 after a long battle with cancer.
     "He was a good citizen and had a good heart for people," said Pat Gartland, who worked with Mr. Goldberg and is now executive director of the Boys and Girls Club in Springfield, Mo. "He had dedication to the kids, an openness to kids of all races, religions and backgrounds."
     In addition to his work with the Boys and Girls Club, Mr. Goldberg was a longtime volunteer for the Ark, delivering food and medicine to seniors who often were younger than himself. He was also an active member of Kesser Maariv Synagogue.
     Mr. Goldberg was born in Philadelphia, the son of Jaye and Edward Goldberg, a mailman. His family came to Chicago when he was an infant. He graduated from Crane High School and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, driving a tank.
     After the war, with partners Mike Rogalski and Charlie Worel, he began a company, Rogal Tube Bending in Chicago, and, along with his wife helped found the Boys Club to give kids in the western suburb something to do.
     "He and Dorothy were really responsible for the fact that the Boys and Girls Club is here today," said Sheehan. "They really were the moving force behind the club coming to Bellwood in 1956. He just touched so many people."
     Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Dorothy; sons Alan and Donald; daughters Janice Sackett and Edie Steinberg (wife of Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg); as well as seven grandchildren and a sister, Arlene Rakoncay.
     Services are at 11 a.m. today at Weinstein Funeral Home in Wilmette. Burial follows at Oak Ridge Jewish Cemetery in Hillside.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 4, 2005