BY ALBERT AMATEAU | Two weeks after celebrating his 72nd wedding anniversary, Frank Rosenberg, who made his home with his family in Greenwich Village for 47 years, died on Fri., Oct. 4, at age 95.
He had been hospitalized after a choking incident at lunch two days earlier, his wife Natalie said. The choking incident was probably caused by Parkinson’s, a condition Rosenberg had for about 10 years, his wife said.
Frank enjoyed life to the end.
“We had a nice party on Sept. 25th for our 72nd anniversary and we had celebrated his 95th birthday and my 90th,” Natalie said.
In an article in the Oct. 17, 2013, issue of The Villager, Bob Krasner wrote about the couple’s 70th anniversary, when four generations of the Rosenberg family and their friends danced the night away.
Frank, the youngest of seven children, was born in 1920 to Max and Lina Gottlieb Rosenberg in Corona, Queens. When he was 10 years old, his father, a tailor, died, and his mother raised the family during the Depression.
The family moved to Brooklyn, where Frank met Natalie and married her in 1943. She was 18 and he was 23.
“We were both living with our families,” Natalie said. “At the time, couples didn’t just move in together. They got married to have sex.”
Frank was a salesman in the beginning and then owned his own printing business. The family grew, with two sons, Marty and Hal, and a daughter, Sara. Frank and Natalie moved to W. 12th St. in the Village in 1968. Marty and Ken Abbott, Sara’s husband, joined Frank in the printing business and developed a printing program, “Ready, Set, Go,” for Apple’s Mac computers, which is still in use.
“They were two physics Ph.D.’s who went into the printing business,” said Natalie, who started out as a teacher, became a guidance counselor and then a psychotherapist.
Marty left the printing business to become a high school science teacher and was once voted the best science teacher in New York State. Sara is a social worker, and Hal is a psychotherapist.
“We have three children, four grandchildren, and now we have four great-grandchildren,” said Natalie.
“Frank was a charming man and sharp as ever until the end,” said Arlene Rubin, a longtime friend and neighbor. “We played bridge, as we always did, the Monday before he died.
“They had friends over for drinks around five o’clock on Fridays and they’d have a party for any occasion,” Rubin said. In 2011 Frank and Natalie had about 100 guests to celebrate one of the first gay weddings in the state.
Funeral services were on Sun., Oct. 11, at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, on Amsterdam Ave. at W. 91st St.
