Roger N. Mangels Sr., manufacturer
Roger N, Mangels Sr., former president of Mangels-Herold Co., manufacturers of King Syrup in Baltimore, died Monday from heart failure at his Chestertown home. He was 86. Roger Neilson Mangels Sr. was born in Baltimore, the son of Walter B. Mangels Sr., president of Mangels-Herold Co., and Louise Neilson Mangels, a homemaker.
He was raised on St. Albans Way in Homeland.
He was a 1950 graduate of McDonogh School, where he attained the rank of cadet major his senior year and had been captain of both the lacrosse and wrestling teams.
Also during his senior year, he joined the Maryland National Guard. He served four years as a sergeant.
In1950, he joined the family business and rose through its ranks to become president of the company.
In addition to syrup, which it began producing in 1901, the firm made starch, bleach and laundry rinse, which it distributed in the Eastern United States from its plant in the 1400 block of Key Highway in South Baltimore.
Mr. Mangels retired from the company in 1985 after it was sold.
He was a former member of the board of Light Street Savings & Loan and the Kent & Queen Anne Hospital.
He was also a founding board member of Chesapeake Bank & Trust Co. in Chestertown. A former Ruxton resident, he moved in 1972 to a farm in Tolchester and, since 2010, had been living in Chestertown.
His wife of 60 years, the former Sally Black, died in 2011.
Mr. Mangels and his wife were avid hunters and supporters of the Washington College lacrosse team — they began the annual Shoreman Stick Supporters Fish Fry. Graveside services are private. He is survived by three sons, Roger Neilson “Neil” Mangels of Chestertown, Walter B. “Tom” Mangels III of Shadyside and Carl B. Mangels of Rock Hall; a daughter, Robin Schepf of Monkton; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Bielski Partisans helped more than 1,200 Jewish people survive the war.
In 1945, the Bloch family ended up at a displaced persons camp near the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. About 50,000 Holocaust survivors underwent rehabilitation and treatment at the camp, where Mr. Bloch became the youngest member of the camp’s governing committee. While there, he met Lilly Czaban, who survived the war by hiding with her family in the grain cellar of a Polish farmer. She and Mr. Bloch were married at the camp in 1949.
They moved to New York and Mr. Bloch took a job with the World Zionist Organization. He worked there for more than 50 years, becoming director of publications and editing or publishing volumes of Holocaust history, memoirs and poetry.
In the 1980s, Mr. Bloch was a principal organizer of survivors’ reunions, including a 1983 gathering of more than 20,000 in Washington. He also served on a commission to create New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. He was on key committees that oversaw the early development of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and helped create museums devoted to the Holocaust and Jewish history at Bergen-Belsen and in Israel.