Marjorie Weinberg-Berman, M.S. '61: Giving Back

by Marjorie Weinberg-Berman, M.S. ’61

Giving Back

The Hy Weinberg Center opened on the campus of Adelphi in 1986. The Department of Speech and Hearing finally had a state-of-the-art building to house this important program. The renowned Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies was there as well.

Everything in life is luck and timing. The Hy Weinberg Center is a prime example of that fact.

In August of 1982, my husband Hy and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. He was a brilliant executive of the company he admired and worked so hard for—Goldman Sachs. As our anniversary day came into view, Hy asked me what I would like as a special gift. I did not hesitate, even for a second, as I had decided I would ask him for a very special gift—a check and a letter of intent to start a fund to build a speech and hearing center at Adelphi. I was one of the first graduate students at Adelphi and our program desperately needed a new home.

Hy was a generous and humane individual. He gave me a check for $25,000 and a letter expressing his wish to help establish a building fund for a new center at Adelphi. How were we to know that in just a few months, a month before his 49th birthday, he would die in Boston, Massachusetts, on one of his few out-of-town work assignments, of a brain aneurysm?

His compassionate partners came to me and offered to honor Hy’s memory by adding a wing to the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art. I immediately thanked them, but told them about Hy’s letter and check to start a fund to build a new speech and hearing center at Adelphi in Garden City. They were incredible in their desire to see this plan come to fruition quickly and with the latest technology.

I went out to visit a similar center at Northwestern University in Chicago, and was so impressed with their facility that we incorporated some of their fine ideas into our building. Now almost 26 years after its opening, the Hy Weinberg Center has been recently restored and even better than when it was first opened with the latest technology and a remarkable teaching and student body.

Hy would be happy to have this center named in his honor. I know that a tragic early death of a remarkable husband and father has given a home to splendid programs that serve our community.

Giving to our community continues to this day, by giving scholarships to clients who need financial assistance. Those who are in need of speech or hearing help and cannot afford it are not turned away from the Hy Weinberg Center.

Marjorie Weinberg-Berman is a graduate and Trustee Emerita of Adelphi University.

A Modest Woman

by Bonnie Soman

Marjorie Weinberg-Berman, M.S. ’61 is too modest to talk about her history of giving back to her alma mater. As director of the Hy Weinberg Center for Communication Disorders (the speech and hearing center), I can tell you firsthand about Marge’s commitment to the clients who attend the center and the students who are in our undergraduate and graduate programs in communication disorders.

Marge regularly funds the Hy Weinberg Scholarship, which subsidizes the cost of services for clients who might not otherwise afford these needed services. In my two decades as clinic director, there hasn’t been a single semester in which Marge hasn’t donated to that fund.

Additionally, Marge has donated significant funds to the center for the purchase of a specialized piece of equipment or to start up a new program. For example, when we developed our signature TOTalk program for toddlers, Marge helped us purchase the furniture and equipment necessary to offer this innovative program.

Marge has given extraordinary gifts in honor of the center’s anniversaries. For our 10th, she donated a van that was used for the next ten years as part of our community outreach program.

These are just some of the examples of Marjorie Weinberg-Berman’s commitment to giving back. There are dozens of others. On behalf of the clients and students in the Hy Weinberg Center, I thank you, Marge.

Dr. Bonnie Soman is director of the Hy Weinberg Center for Communication Disorders