The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A century’s worth of stories
As Murray Weingrad turns 100, a look back at a life that included playing for UConn, teaching and serving in World War II
STAMFORD — Murray Weingrad is sitting comfortably, waiting next to his bride, Genevieve, at their downtown condo at the Buckingham.
“They’re inseparable,” whispers Weingrad’s daughter, Deb.
Late last year, when both were in rehabilitation, if Genevieve was missing from her room the nurses knew exactly where to find her — in Murray’s room.
On Saturday afternoon, they will be together at the Stamford home of Randi and Craig Price, Weingrad’s granddaughter and grandson-in-law, to celebrate Murray’s 100th birthday. Yes, Murray was born the same year the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.
There’s a circular driveway at the Price home and a spot where Murray — call him Murph, call him Coach — and Genevieve can sit in the shade and enjoy a drivethrough, COVID-style birthday party. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren will be on hand and socially distant. Times are reserved for friends to drive up, wish Murray a happy birthday and get a slice of cake and a bottled water. For folks not in the area, there are weekend accommodations for Zoom meetings. There will be recorded messages made for him.
The oldest known former UConn athlete, a man who served his country in World War II, a man who served to help the NBA find labor peace, deserves all the attention this weekend. Every bit
of it.
So how does it feel to turn 100, Murray?
“Not bad,” he said, breaking into a small smile. “What else to tell?”
As he digs deep, deeper, deeper into his fascinating personal stories, Murph has plenty else to tell. He is, as Tom Brokaw wrote, part of America’s Greatest Generation, but he’s part of other generations, too.
Persuaded by his sisterin-law Joy Reback and Gen’s niece, Alice Rodin, Murray met Genevieve on a blind date at the railroad station. Murray thought Gen was a “vision” in a Persian lamb coat with a red rose.
And Gen? “I said, ‘Oh my God, my niece is crazy.’ ”
They were married three months later in March 1961.
“What do I think of his 100th birthday?” said Gen, who’ll turn 99 later this year. “I think I couldn’t do without him.”
Murray Weingrad was born in Ossining, N.Y., on July 25, 1920, the son of Russian immigrants. His dad, who had been exiled to Siberia and managed to get to England and the U.S. through China, was a tailor and would open the first dry cleaning business in Westchester County. The ’20s were prosperous until the stock market crash in 1929.
“The ’30s, things were pretty tough,” Murray said.
His dad lost his business. Murray remembers eating canned tuna and salmon they got on credit from the local A&P, where he continued to work a year after high school to help. He remembers a tennis racket as a bar mitzvah gift. He became a strong player and continued to play tennis until he was 90.
Nearby Sing Sing put together a prison baseball team and later a football team. Murray was allowed inside to sell hot dogs and sodas in the grandstand. After Warner Bros. made the movie “20,000 Years in Sing Sing,” they built a gymnasium where the prisoners played basketball and Murray watched his brother referee.
He applied to NYU, but did not have the money and couldn’t secure an athletic scholarship. He established residency in Connecticut with a cousin who lived in state. He got into UConn. There was no I-95 in those days and the parkway only went to Westport. There were times he’d hitchhike all the way to Storrs. He played three sports — football, basketball and baseball — on the freshman teams at UConn. He started in basketball.
“After a year of football, I decided this is not my sport,” Weingrad said. “Some tackle from a private school hit me and he must have been 200 pounds. I was 125. I said this game is not for me.”
He stuck with basketball, coached in those days by Donald White. Murray worked on the campus paper and for school radio. As a junior, he was chairman of the prom and president of Hillel, the Jewish campus organization. It was at the campus cafeteria during his sophomore year where he would meet his first wife. Louise had just arrived on campus, escorted by her two aunts.
In 1942, Murray’s number came up. He was drafted into the Army and assigned to a program for the occupation of Germany. He was sent to CCNY to study German and history. He married Louise, who was from Stamford, upon her UConn graduation in 1944. He got in with Hall of Fame legend Nat Holman and organized players for an exhibition with Holman’s CCNY team. He was reassigned to the 1262nd Engineer Combat Battalion and what he calls “the hellhole” of Camp Shelby in Mississippi.
Because of the constant threat of submarine and air attacks, it took more than 15 days in late fall 1944 to cross the Atlantic to England. After some training, they crossed the English Channel into the bitter winter cold of France. They set up in pyramidal tents, five men per tent, with a potbelly stove in the middle. They would make their way through the Maginot and Siegfried lines. Murray encountered his first dead German, sitting frozen in a tree.
First assigned to Omar Bradley’s First Army and later to George Patton’s Third Army, the Battle of the Bulge was winding down as the 1262nd battalion headed south from Belgium through Germany, often out front building pontoon bridges, Bailey bridges, probing and cleared minefields, extending communication lines.
Murray took part in the Battle of Remagen, frontpage news in America, as U.S. troops crossed the partially destroyed Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine in March 1945. They turned south toward Nuremburg. They came across Polish slave workers. They built a POW camp and Murray, with the German he learned, interrogated German soldiers.
There was time to play a little baseball and basketball as the war in Europe wound down. Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp came over for a clinic and said “When we come to New York, you can sit on the bench with me.”
“Of course, that never happened,” Murray said.
As the battalion headed back toward Paris, orders arrived to go to Japan. The atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to that. There was a letter from home asking Murray to look up a distant relative. She had been released from a German camp by the Swedish Red Cross. Murray was able to get her canned food and chocolate.
“Then my stay in Europe took a big turn,” Murray said. “With so many of us waiting to go home, some fellows were offered a chance to teach in the Riviera or to go for more schooling. I could have gone to Oxford.”
He chose the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He took courses there that transferred as credits to help get him a bachelor’s degree in history at UConn. He was discharged in 1946 and went directly to Stamford and Louise. He finished his bachelor’s at Storrs on weekends that year and would go on to get two master’s degrees at NYU.
He taught junior high and high school history at Stamford. He would become a leader with the American Federation of Teachers. He became a member of the Stamford Board of Education. There were battles for teachers, against AntiSemitism, on integrating schools. Jackie Robinson, who had moved to Stamford, was very much involved in integration. All along, Murph helped manage beach clubs and golf clubs and coached and refereed sports, a mainstay at the Stamford Jewish Community Center.
He did it without vacations and with his beloved Louise. And then Louise died in 1959 from a damaged aortic heart valve. She was still in her 30s and it was a crushing blow. It was a hole in Murray Weingrad’s life that only the greatest blind date in history could fill. Genevieve had three children of her own, and their blended families have led the path to a house full of grandchildren and greatgrandchildren for a 100th birthday party for a man who has lived and seen it all …
“Have you heard of J. Walter Kennedy?” Weingrad asks.
“Sure, the old NBA commissioner,” I answered.
Murray worked for Martin Segal, an international consulting and investment company. He worked for the Pension and Welfare Department of U.S. Labor. He was an adjunct professor at the University of Bridgeport until 2010.
“Well, Kennedy (who was commissioner from 1963-75) was from Stamford, and this was in the earlier years of the league,” he says. “There were a lot of complicated issues, with pensions and such. He asked me to be a mediator.
“So I went to different NBA cities, talking to players one-on-one, going over things to help settle the labor contract.”
Nowadays this would be handled by a team of lawyers, and such matters would be all over the internet. For Murray Weingrab, the oldest known living UConn athlete, it was another episode in 100 years of a most fascinating life.