Internship honors the spirit of advocate for families and children

by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

The Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Mercer County will honor the generous spirit of a dedicated volunteer through a memorial scholarship for budding Jewish communal workers.
The Phyllis C. Pack Deitz Memorial Endowment Jewish Internship Scholarship will fund a summer internship at JFCS for a student considering a career in Jewish community service. The scholarship memorializes the longtime service to the agency of Phyllis Deitz, a former resident of Trenton and Ewing who died last year in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Deitz’s husband, Morton Deitz, established the scholarship through an $18,000 gift to a special fund at JFCS. The fund is being administered through the Jewish Community Foundation, the endowment arm of United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks.

At the formal inauguration of the scholarship at JFCS’ annual meeting on June 6, Linda Meisel, executive director of the agency, described Phyllis Deitz as “an ardent believer and supporter for good causes and, in particular, the Jewish community and JFCS.”

“Phyllis was a tireless volunteer on behalf of Jewish causes — and an ardent supporter of Israel,” Meisel said, “helping JFCS in the ’80s to resettle refugees from the former Soviet Union, working with JFCS in the ’90s to move to its present location, and, with her husband, Morton, donating the funds to establish the executive director’s office in memory of their parents.”

Memorializing Deitz through an internship in Jewish community service is especially apt, Meisel said in a separate interview.

“It fits very nicely with Phyllis because Phyllis cared deeply about the Jewish community and about providing services to the Jewish community,” she said. Meisel added that the Deitz internship, which will be launched at JFCS next summer, will be open to undergraduates interested in a career in Jewish community service. She welcomed the fact that the eight-to-10-week internship would expose candidates to the nuts and bolts of what the profession has to offer.

“I think it’s great,” she said. “For me, the significance is that we get to participate in exciting a young person about choosing this as a career — and for me personally, that’s very exciting.”

Reached at his home in Boynton Beach, Morton Deitz recalled that his wife was instrumental in cajoling the social-service agency to expand its name from Jewish Family Service to Jewish Family and Children’s Service to reflect its particular concern for children. She also helped establish the Kosher Cafe, a free program for seniors from the Trenton and Ewing communities, he said.

“The focus of her most recent efforts in community service was the Jewish Family and Children’s Service,” said Deitz, who is retired from his longtime career as an attorney in Princeton. “It meant everything to her.

“As a volunteer, she was in charge of the resettlement of Russian émigrés,” he said. “She secured residences for them. She begged, borrowed, or stole dishes, furniture, blankets, and towels, because these people came in with nothing. This is the type of responsibility she undertook gladly and pursued diligently.”

In addition to his late wife’s longtime service on the JFCS board, Deitz said, she served as president of the Women’s Division and chair of Super Sunday for the federation. She also devoted her time and energies to Hadassah, the Greenwood House Home for the Jewish Aged in Ewing, and State of Israel Bonds.

It is very difficult for him to adequately express the depth of his feelings about establishing the scholarship in his wife’s memory, Deitz added. “The creation of the endowment speaks for itself,” he said. “Phyllis’ effort on behalf of the community speaks for itself. It’s a small token of recognition of her many years of service.”

One of the Deitzes’ two daughters, Kathi Wachtenheim of Marlborough, Mass., pointed to the scholarship as an excellent way to remember her mother and the example she set for her and her sister, Sherri Twer of Holland, Pa.

“It truly does honor my mom. It honors all the things that were so true to her heart,” Wachtenheim said in a telephone interview. “She was a real go-getter, a remarkable, remarkable person. If she believed in something, she gave it her all. She really taught her family what it means to give to others.

“To pass that on to another young person who hopefully will feel as strongly as she did about helping Jewish organizations and about helping fellow Jews — well, I’m delighted my dad did this.”