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Gertrude Katz
Gertrude Katz as a child in front of what is now the Apple Bank in Sag Harbor.
Gertrude Katz, a pillar of the Sag Harbor Jewish community and a former Main Street merchant, died on Thursday, March 17, at her home in North Haven. Katz, who was 92, had been in declining health for some time, her family said.
“There’s a saying that when a person lives a long, good, and happy life, it’s not a tragedy when they pass away,” said her daughter, Susan Katz Leavitt of Manhattan and Water Mill, “but it is still a very big loss.”
She added that her mother had told her children not to grieve for her because she had lived a good life in a community she loved. “This was her home, this is where she wanted to be,” Leavitt said of Sag Harbor. “She loved it here and the people were so good to her.”
Katz, who went by “Gert,” was born on November 28, 1929, in Greenport, but the following year, her parents, Phil and Nettie Rosenstein, moved to Sag Harbor, where they opened the Fil-Net Shoppe, a clothing store in the Main Street building now occupied by Brown Harris Stevens Real Estate. Katz worked in the shop and later took it over from her parents and renamed it the Trude Shoppe, which she ran until 1985.
Katz was educated in Sag Harbor schools, graduating from Pierson High School and then attending New York University, where she met her future husband, Donald Katz. When they returned to Sag Harbor after their marriage in 1950, he opened an accounting firm just down the street from her family’s store.
In a profile written by Nancy Remkus that appeared in the December 13, 2018, edition of the Express, Katz described the Sag Harbor of her youth as an almost idyllic place, where “we were all brought up to respect each other’s ethnicity, color and religion.”
Leavitt said her mother often thanked her lucky stars that her grandparents had made the decision to emigrate from their native Poland when they did. “When my mom met people later on in life who survived the Holocaust, she almost felt guilty because the life she was living at the same time was so wonderful,” she said.
Leavitt said one of her mother’s fondest memories came when she, as drum major of the Pierson band, led a parade on the day World War II ended.
In “The (Unusual) Jewish History of Sag Harbor,” a video made by the journalist Karl Grossman, Katz recalled that when she was in ninth grade, the Pierson music teacher, Pop Mazzeo, informed her that she was would be the drum major that year. Mazzeo explained to Katz that her father, who had died a few years earlier, had told him he always dreamed of seeing his daughter lead the Pierson marching band and that he was fulfilling that dream.
Katz’s family worshiped at Temple Adas Israel from the time it moved to Sag Harbor, and years later, she and her husband worked hard to transform the synagogue, which was open only seasonally at the time, into a year-round congregation.
“The Katz family always sat in the front row,” said Rabbi Daniel Geffen, who came to Sag Harbor in 2014. “Every time, as I was giving a sermon, she was one of those people I’d look at in the crowd, and she’d give me a little smile. It was a silent, graceful way of saying, ‘You’ve got this.’”
“Just being around her, you felt elevated,” he added. “She was one of those people who had that kind of impact.”
Besides the synagogue, Katz was active in the John Jermain Memorial Library and the Sag Harbor Food Pantry, her family said.
Her son, Hank Katz of Sag Harbor, said his mother instilled a strong sense of discipline and commitment in her children. “She was firm, but fair,” he said, while adding that she was devoted to her children and grandchildren.
He recalled when his father was in the hospital for knee surgery, and his mother, who was visiting him in the hospital, tripped and fell, breaking her hip. Katz said he flew to Florida, where his parents were spending the winter, and went straight to the hospital, arriving just as his mother was being wheeled back to her room after surgery. “The first thing she said was, ‘You must be starving,’” he said.
Besides her daughter, Susan, and son, Hank, Katz is survived by her daughter Jane Levy of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, nine grandchildren and five grandchildren. She was predeceased by her husband and her daughter, Phyllis.
A graveside service, officiated by Katz’s grandson, Rabbi Noah Leavitt, was held at Chevra Kodetia Cemetery in Sag Harbor on Friday, March 18.
The family has asked that memorial donations be made to East End Hospice and Temple Adas Israel in Katz’s name.
Stephen J. Kotz on Mar 23, 2022