Hunters Heroine
Klara Silverstein connects with people in a refreshingly traditional way; she has been married to the same man for almost 54 years and she prefers to communicate by phone. The Brooklyn native has called the East Side home for 25 years. She entered Hunter College in 1950, when it was still a women"s school, and remains loyal to her alma mater through her philanthropic efforts. Hunter gave her a lot, she says, including a deepening desire to help others. The school also unwittingly helped in the personal realm. When she was 18, she was chosen by Hillel, the foundation to enrich Jewish campus life, to attend a camp for â??potential leaders of the Jewish community. There, she met 20-year-old Larry Silverstein, an NYU student and the man she would eventually marry. Today, he is a prominent real estate investor and developer in New York City who leased the World Trade Center shortly before it was destroyed in 2001. After graduating from Hunter, Silverstein worked as a special education teacher on the Lower East Side, supporting her husband through law school. The couple moved to White Plains where they raised three children. Lisa and Roger now work for their dad; Sharon, the oldest, is a homemaker in California. Once the nest emptied, the couple moved and Silverstein got busy with charitable efforts. The Silversteins endowed Hunter"s Chair of Education, and Klara Silverstein is on the board of trustees of the Hunter College Foundation, a group that awards scholarships and enables the hiring of the â??wonderful teachers who come to Hunter. â??I am proud of the fact that Hunter was ranked number two by the Princeton Review for public education, she said. It was voted a â??Best Value college, up from number eight last year, and second only to the University of Virginia. â??What I do is live out something that is part of our traditional Jewish heritage, she said. In her pursuit of â??tzedek (social justice) and â??tikkun olam (repairing the world), she has long been involved with the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York, an organization that helps the needy and strengthens Jewish life and learning. The offices are on East 59th Street, one convenient block from where she lives. She has chaired the women"s committee and once chaired the federation"s annual campaign: â??Quite a big job, but a pleasure because of the amount of money we raised for humanitarian purposes. She and daughter Lisa Silverstein were honored at the federation"s women philanthropists event for their outstanding dedication in the philanthropic world. Klara and Larry have eight grandchildren, ages 2 to 20. For family fun they gather on their beloved powerboat, â??The first of its kind to be propelled with water jets, she said, now approaching its 23rd birthday and still going strong.