March 16--COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Photos: Florence and Moe Levy's legacy
Florence Levy saw a lot of changes in her 106 years, but her place in the world -- behind the jewelry counter at Columbia's Reliable Loan pawn shop -- was a constant.
That spot is empty now. The spirited native New Yorker and wife of the late Moe Levy died at 4:30 a.m. Saturday at Palmetto Health Heart Hospital.
Until a week ago, Levy, a Columbia fixture, still went to work every day.
"That's what kept her going, the fact that she had a place to go, that she had something to do," said her son-in-law Harold Rittenberg, 82, who runs the side-by-side stores -- Moe Levy's and the Reliable pawn shop -- on Assembly Street. "She always said that. She said, 'I couldn't stay home.'"
Levy's last day at her post was March 8, just shy of a week after she turned 106. And she stopped going to work then only because she had to be hospitalized for health problems, Rittenberg said.
"She just stopped eating," he said. "She loved ice cream and crackers. When she wouldn't eat the ice cream and crackers, we knew something was wrong."
And she had stopped talking -- a rarity for the woman who thrived on interacting with customers, Rittenberg said.
"If they come in and they don't talk to her ... she'll fuss at them a little bit," he said. "But everybody loved her. She just had a way about her."
And, as a saucy centenarian, "she could get by with anything," he said, such as telling somebody they needed a haircut or they had a nice lady and better take care of her.
She would tell people she came from up north and got stuck here, saying, "'I'm a Yankee and you can't change me,'" Rittenberg said.
Al Browder, 48, of Gaston, did work for Levy around her house and was one of many who would visit with her at the shop.
"I used to go in there and get fussed at if I didn't help sell merchandise," he said. "Whatever she thought, she told you."
Browder took Levy -- who he called "Ma" -- to lunch at nearby Wendy's once before her 90th birthday. He got her settled and then started to the counter to order. She told him to sit down. As he started to protest, the manager came out to take their orders and bring their food.
"Only she could take something like that and make it work," he said. "That's a pair of shoes that you ain't gonna fill."
Rabbi Jonathan Case, leader of Beth Shalom Synagogue, where she was a nearly lifelong member, called Levy a character, "spry and energetic ... wonderful wise cracks and a wonderful sense of humor."
She wasn't a bad salesman either, he said. She would often point her finger at a customer and say, "Come on over here, I've got something to show you." And the customer, never intending to buy it, would often come out with a bag under his arm, Case said.
Case himself was often on the other end of that pointing finger, too.
"At the end of (synagogue) services, she'd take that index finger and wiggle it at me," he said, telling him whether he had done a good job -- or not.
"She'd let me have it with both barrels either way," he said.
Levy also had her finger on everything that went on in Columbia's Jewish community as a supporter, either with her time or money, Case said.
With her gone, "It's going to be like having a missing tooth," he said.
Levy was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1907, when most homes did not have electricity and the latest in technology was the automobile.
She moved to Columbia in 1926 and married Moe Levy, who had opened his clothing store in 1920 at the corner of Assembly and Lady Streets -- where it still stands today. As the story goes, Levy persuaded her husband to open Reliable during World War II so she would have her own store to run.
Eventually, as their daughter and son-in-law, Gloria and Harold Rittenberg, got involved in the business, Levy and her husband took some time to enjoy things they loved: fishing at Lake Murray, "going wild" at USC basketball games and traveling to places like Cuba and California on a dance tour with Arthur Murray.
Trophies from that tour still adorn the Cottontown home where she lived for 87 years, Rittenberg said. It was a place where she welcomed over the years large gatherings of family, friends and even Jewish Fort Jackson soldiers for Passover meals and other events.
And it was a short hop from there to what was then Columbia's mental health hospital on Bull Street, where she volunteered by taking patients shopping or to visit her lake house in years past.
In the 1970s, the Levys bought a retirement condo in Florida. But they never made it there. Moe Levy died in 1974.
After that, Florence Levy started working more in the stores, at first doing the books for Moe Levy's, and finally settling into her spot at Reliable every day. In recent years, her home health care workers would bring her in before lunch and she would stay until 5 p.m. every day -- still calling out to customers and fussing if she thought Gloria or Harold weren't doing something the right way.
She might get mad, her son-in-law said, but "by the end of the day, she wouldn't leave until I gave her two kisses, one on each cheek."
The longtime downtown retailer got a key to the city from Mayor Steve Benjamin last year and the Order of the Silver Crescent from Gov. Jim Hodges more than a decade ago.
Levy leaves behind two other daughters -- Arlene Pearlstine and Iris Balser -- and a range of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.
"It's so strange, even right now -- she's not sitting right here," Rittenberg said last week from Reliable, as his wife and other family members rallied around Levy in the hospital.
"She's been in remarkable health. She hadn't been in the hospital in 30 years," Rittenberg said. "Age just finally caught up with her.
"She will be missed."
