Ida Katz, a former Pikesville homemaker who with her husband quietly financially supported the Mary Dobkin Children's Fund Inc., which helped generations of underprivileged city children, died of pneumonia Sunday at Northwest Hospital Center.
Mrs. Katz would have celebrated her 100th birthday Thursday.
In 1979, Mary Dobkin's life was portrayed in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Aunt Mary, starring actress Jean Stapleton, who later became a close friend. It wasn't until the TV program aired that Mrs. Katz's sons learned about their parents' philanthropy.
Ida Rudo, the daughter of immigrant parents from Ukraine, was born at home on East Baltimore Street.
In 1913, she and her family joined the Hebrew Colonial Society's 351-acre Yaazor commune off Johnnycake Road, near the present-day intersection of Interstate 70 and the Beltway in Woodlawn.
"This local attempt to build agrarian skills among traditionally urban Jews was rough - outdoor plumbing, no electricity, a one-room school, Belmont Elementary, for the children," said a son, Dr. Morton I. Katz, a retired Pikesville orthodontist.
"It was truly Old World, with Russian and Yiddish the only languages spoken among the approximately 200 residents," he said.
Seeking better educational opportunities for their children, the family left the commune and settled permanently into a McCulloh Street rowhouse in 1919.
After graduating from Western High School in 1926, Mrs. Katz went to work as a bookkeeper for Fairmount Mill and Lumber Co. on East Fairmount Avenue, a business her father established in the early 1920s.
She met her future husband, Ralph Katz, one day when he came into the lumberyard to purchase some wood.
They were married in 1938, and lived for years on Kathland Avenue and later Strathmore Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, where they raised their three sons.
Mr. Katz died in 2000.
"They became involved in the good works of a local lady, Mary Dobkin, who organized sports teams and leagues for inner-city youths, in order to keep them off the streets and out of trouble," Dr. Katz said.
"Although crippled herself, impoverished and on welfare, Mary devoted all of her energies to `her boys,'" he said. "When my parents realized she was not receiving consistent support, they became her secret benefactors, and for decades, they covered most of her financial needs."
Mr. and Mrs. Katz did not even tell their sons of their philanthropy.
