Mary Friedman Blatt

Mary Friedman Blatt taught school in Haverstraw for more than 30 years and now says "all my little children are senior citizens."
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Blatt was born in Manhattan on June 14, 1903, but grew up in Hartford, Conn., where she began her teaching career before attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was one of about only 30 female students.

In 1932, while teaching in Brooklyn, she was recruited for an opening at the only school in Haverstraw at the time.

She taught there until 1963, when she retired early to care for her husband of more than 20 years, Bernard, who was stricken with diabetes.

For more than three decades, she told a visitor yesterday, she taught many of Haverstraw's present senior citizens."I taught them all," she says, sitting in a lounge at Sunrise Assisted Living in New City.She mentions "Little Israel Bordainick.I had him in the fourth grade."Bordainick, 55, retired in December as assistant superintendent of personnel and community relations for the North Rockland school district.He's now a school administrator in New Jersey.

In her prime, Blatt also was active in the community, crocheting sweaters and blankets for soldiers during World War II, volunteering with the ambulance corps, Red Cross and Meals on Wheels.

What little family Blatt has, mostly nieces and nephews, is scattered across the country.

But a chance meeting 23 years ago has made her part of a New City family.

Blatt, by then a widow, was living alone on First Street in Haverstraw when a freshman gerontology student at St. Thomas Aquinas College came knocking.
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That was Mary Blatt, who was puzzled by the visit because she was a volunteer with Meals on Wheels, not a recipient.
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Now Mary Blatt is family, visiting Pat and Terry Sullivan and their four children every Sunday for brunch.
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Blatt, an Orthodox Jew, laughs as she announces, "I'm the only Jew in the Sullivan family."She even visited a convent with two of Pat Sullivan's aunts, who are nuns.

Ask Blatt about her longevity and she says, "I have to blame it on my genes.