Hilda Weiner, 88, made her life count

SAM WEINER was shipping out the next day from New York with his armored division for a Europe at war.

With one night of liberty, he called long-distance - an extravagance in the '40s - to Philadelphia and asked Hilda Lichter, whom he'd been dating, to meet him under the clock at Pennsylvania Station for a last night together.

She thought, why not?

But whatever romantic fantasies Sam may have harbored didn't materialize. He'd already proposed to Hilda, but she had turned him down because a) she didn't want to be a war widow, and b) she was a party-loving girl who didn't want to be in social limbo for years.

The couple had something to eat, went to the movies, walked around the big city a bit, she kissed him goodbye, took the train back to Philadelphia, took the subway and El back home in the middle of the night from North Philadelphia station - and that evening went to the USO with friends to dance with the uniformed guys.

When Sam returned from World War II, they married, had their honeymoon in New York, and were inseparable for nearly 50 years, until his death in 1993.

What that wartime incident showed, though, was the essence of Hilda: quiet adventurousness, romance tempered by practicality, a willful intelligence colored by innocence and a faith that things work out, and a spirit that embraced every chance to be happy.

Hilda Weiner died peacefully in her sleep Tuesday. She was 88 and was living at Rydal Park, but had spent more than five decades in Oxford Circle.

She was the youngest of the six children of Nathan Lichter and Rose Commander Lichter. She graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1939, and the very next day went out and got a job.

Hilda was a born bookkeeper, a task that she performed throughout her working life - first, in a tobacco and candy distributor's office, then with the James D. Morrissey construction company, and, for many years, Frankford Hospital (now Atria Health's Frankford campus).

The attention to detail that makes a good bookkeeper carried over into her personal life.

Woe betide any utility, bank or business that made a mistake on her bills or statements, as she would sit triple-checking every figure and decimal point.

"She should have worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission," said her son Jay. "With her attention to detail they would have caught Bernie Madoff years ago."

Hilda and Sam moved to a new rowhouse in Oxford Circle and became founding members of the Oxford Circle Jewish Community Center.

After her retirement, she was for many years the program director for a senior group at the JCC Klein branch in the Northeast.

Not much for hobbies, Hilda's one great diversion - her daily treat, she called it - was reading newspapers.

The shaky state of the newspaper business, with the unacceptable possibility of her not being able to get them, worried her about as much as the state of the world that they brought to her living room.

She read every word, from masthead to the tiniest classified ad, absorbing as much information as she could and noting errors that peeved her.

At one time, she was seeing three papers a day - Daily News, Inquirer, the old Evening Bulletin (along with the weekly Jewish Exponent) - and even subscribed to the short-lived Sunday Daily News.

So, it was with great pride that she saw both her sons become newspapermen: Jay, a sportswriter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune; Ed, a Courier-Post and Seattle Times staffer, longtime freelancer and now copy editor for the Daily News.

Both sons also are authors, and this doubled Hilda's bragging rights.

She could take or leave traveling, but somehow notched visits to London, Paris, Israel, Mexico City and other far-flung places that she remembered more for what she ate there than what she saw.

Cruises were more her style, and resorts: Host Farm, in Lancaster, was a particular favorite.

After her husband's death, Hilda moved to Rydal Park - her first time living by herself - and instantly made it home.

In fact, the moving men were still bringing furniture into her apartment when she made and kept an appointment to get her hair done, then went to dinner.

Soon, and for the rest of her time there, she attended every event, every lecture, every residents' meeting, and almost always sat in the front row.

Even a severely broken hip three years ago didn't stop her from enjoying everything and everyone Rydal had to offer. That is, unless "Dancing with the Stars" was on TV.

Besides her sons, Hilda is survived by two grandsons, Henry Weiner and Nathan Juergens, and her lifelong best friend, Ethel Brandoff.

Services: Noon Monday at Goldstein's Rosenberg's Raphael-Sacks, 310 Second Street Pike, Southampton. Burial will be in Shalom Memorial Park, Huntingdon Valley.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the Rydal Park Friendship Fund, 1515 The Fairway, Rydal, PA 19046