Julia Blumenthal, visionary advocate for elderly, dies

Correction appended.

Julia Blumenthal, a community stalwart who led the founding of Riverdale Senior Services (RSS), died on Saturday due to a stroke, her daughter said. Ms. Blumenthal was 93.

Family and colleagues remembered her as an assertive leader who dedicated her life to serving seniors in the community.

They recalled a 2014 ribbon cutting for a garden at RSS named after her as an example of her strong personality.

“Even when she came here and was quite frail for the opening, we were asking her if she wanted to cut the ribbon,” said RSS’ Executive Director Julia Schwartz-Leeper.  “She was with her walker but she said, ‘I can do it. You don’t need to do it for me.’”

That kind of tenacity enabled her to establish RSS, persuade other Riverdalians to help and lead the organization for decades, according to Ms. Schwartz-Leeper, longtime RSS board member Bob Rubinstein and Ms. Blumenthal’s daughter, Mary Blumenthal-Lane.

Ms. Blumenthal-Lane said a neighbor, Eleanor Katzman, planted the idea of RSS in Ms. Blumenthal. Ms. Blumenthal then reached out to city authorities, found a location for RSS and recruited other Riverdalians to launch RSS, then known as the Riverdale Senior Center, in the late 1960s.

From the start, she envisioned the organization as a place to help seniors lead active and healthy lives.

“She had this mission that seniors were not going to be sitting on park benches with nothing to do,” said Ms. Schwartz-Leeper. “Forty years ago, we had yoga and all kinds of discussion groups. It always had a level of sophistication because she was such a smart, interesting person.”

Today, RSS offers a wide range of activities, classes, support groups and workshops. Lunch is served every day, creating a convivial atmosphere for its members — some of whom do not have anyone in their lives outside of RSS.

Until recent years, when Ms. Blumenthal moved to the Westchester Meadows retirement community in Valhalla, New York, she remained involved in RSS.

“She kept close contact with me to make sure I was continuing to carry through her vision,” Ms. Schwartz-Leeper said.