Monroe Historical Society Trustee Frederick George Rosenzweig died June 8 and is very much missed by all who knew him.

He was very active in the Monroe Historical Society. His phenomenal memory and his donations of time and money were assets the organization will find very difficult to duplicate. He worked every Monday in the museum and thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed by the Monroe school students who came to tour the museum.

Fred was born in Cheney, Washington, on Oct. 25, 1918, the only son of Harry and Mary (Ruppenthal) Rosenzweig, and came to Monroe in 1924. He was a very bright little six-year old who already knew how to read and didn’t fit well in the first grade. They kept advancing him in school until they found a slot where he fit. When he reached high school, he was too small to play football. He reached his full height of six-foot-four in the university, and when he visited Monroe, his former classmates didn’t recognize him.

His father thought he should major in forestry because the timber industry was everywhere. He dutifully followed his advise.

As a little kid, he had a newspaper route: “The Seattle Star.” He remembered every store and storefront where he delivered this paper. His remarkable memory was a great help to the Monroe Historical Society. He wrote up a history of Monroe’s first two banks, the First National Bank of Monroe and the Monroe National Bank to correct misinformation that had been published.

In 1941, Fred worked for the Serv-U-Meat company in Seattle, and following WWII worked there from 1946-1963. Then he went to work for the Internal Revenue Service until his eyesight began to be a problem. From 1976-1982 he was a security guard at St. Johns Hospital in Longview, Washington.

Fred really found his place in life when he learned to fly during WWII. In B-17s he flew thirty-five missions over Germany probably making life difficult for some of his German relatives.

After the war, when he was stationed in Ohio, he developed histo plasmosis, which, over time, caused his eyesight to diminish until he was legally blind. He refused to carry a white cane and got around remarkably well. He studied at the Blind Center at Palo Alto, California, and was trained to do things such as knowing the denomination of paper money by the way it was folded. He even learned how to use electric saws and cut out lap boards for many of his friends. The veterans Administration provided him with a computer that could enlarge print so that he could read. He loved gardening and raised wonderful vegetables and fruits every year.The collection, preservation and display of our history is neither cheap, quick, nor easy. We are an all volunteer organization and our members spend as much time fundraising as they do collecting, preserving and displaying our history. The less time our volunteers can spend on fundraising the more time they can spend on gathering history and making it available to the public.

On Sept. 1, 1941 he married Mary Jeanne (MJ) Chadwick. They had four sons: James R. of North Seattle who worked as a technical manager for several consulting firms, one of which was involved in the study of sonar; John who owns a dental lab in Atlanta; Allen who is project manager of public works for the City of Everett; and Charles who is chief criminal deputy for Cowlitz County and lives in Longview.

Fred returned to Monroe in 1984 and married Eileen (Camp) Clark. She died in 2001. Their house and yard became too big for him to care for, so he bought a duplex north of town on High Meadow Road where Marie King took care of him until he died. Fred was also very active in the First Congregational Church.

Fred’s father, Harry, lived to be 100. His mother, Mary, was a much loved teacher in the Wagner Mill School who died in 1940. To this day, her former students talk about what they learned from her. Teaching reading was a specialty. She also taught them to memorize sums of small numbers to make them skilled at addition. One woman remembered being dropped off at the school when she was about six and didn’t know a word of English. Mrs. Rosenzweig carried her in her arms a good part of the day until she was able to cope with the situation.