“She’s been the power behind everything that happens here,” Lois Rittenhouse said with a smile for Barbara Sugarman, who was working in the lobby of the Friedman Jewish Community Center in Kingston.
“She is one awesome lady,” said Cissie Ashley.
“She’s been part of this place in such an intense way. The dedication she has to Sara’s Table has been remarkable,” Rabbi Larry Kaplan said, referring to the JCC’s food pantry for the needy.
On a recent, ordinary weekday morning, the JCC was bustling with people coming and going from exercise class or Pickleball games, arriving to do volunteer work or to buy one of the kosher meals long-time employee Barbara Sugarman had ready for pick-up.
Because Sugarman, who recently turned 82, plans to retire next month after 67 years working for the JCC, a reporter visited and asked people how they feel about the woman who for decades has been synonymous with the Jewish Community Center.
“You should title your piece ‘Spot Reserved in Heaven,’ ” Pickleball player Jeff Lubin advised the reporter.
“She’s an enabler, in a good way,” Lubin continued. “I started teaching a class here (in biblical studies) and Barb helped me get it off the ground. With the bridge club, the men’s club, she asks, ‘What do you need?’ and she makes it happen.”
Back in the 1950s, Sugarman was a 15-year-old student at Kingston High School who wanted a summer job.
“All of my friends were working at the camp,” she said, noting the JCC maintained a camp at Twin Lakes at the time. “I called for a job and they said the staff was full but if I wanted to volunteer I could.”
Sugarman began working as a volunteer but by the time seven weeks of summer camp were over, the camp administration decided to pay her after all. Her salary for the whole summer was $35, paid in one lump sum.
With camp over for the season, Sugarman volunteered to work at the center through the rest of her high school career and while she was studying education at Temple University. Basically, she never left — not during the time she worked for the Bell Telephone Co., and not when she and her husband, the late Howard Sugarman, were raising their three children.
For 19 years she served as the Jewish Center Youth Regional Director and for more than 20 subsequent years she has served as director of adult and cultural programs, arranging holiday and educational programs, collecting food for the hungry and helping people every way she could think of.
“She’s a wealth of knowledge. She answers any question you have,” said co-worker Lisa Cope. “In the short time I’ve been here, about a year and a half, she’s like my best friend.”
“If you ever needed any kind of connection, she knew it,” said Gerri Kaplan, leader of the Midrasha School.
“I like people,” Sugarman said, offering a hint to the key to her success. “I’m a people person. I tell people to call me, even on a weekend, even at night. I like to be available.”
For Sugarman, it was difficult in recent weeks to tell person after person that an upcoming local history class at the JCC, to be taught by local historian Tony Brooks, had reached its limit and their names would be put on a waiting list.
More recently she was relieved to have the class moved to a larger space, so the 47 people on the waiting list could be notified that they were welcome to attend after all.
Making them happy made her happy.
“I can’t imagine this place without her,” said JCC president Jane Messinger. “She is the essence of the JCC and what we’re all about. She’s irreplaceable.”
“We’re going to remain friends,” Messinger said, giving Sugarman a fond hug. “Hopefully she’ll come back for a visit.”
“I’m going to miss the people here,” said Sugarman, whose next chapter involves moving to South Carolina to live with her son Jeff and daughter-in-law Heather, who are building a home there.
Other family members include daughter Wendy and her husband Scott Lowden, daughter Randi and her husband Aaron Chapin and grandchildren Katie Sugarman, Jacob Sugarman and Sydney Chapin.
Family and friends will celebrate Sugarman’s long career this weekend at a brunch, and she expects her last day at work will be in the middle of August.
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| First Take
