Shirley E. Handelsman, a long-time Planned Parenthood advocate and consumer affairs activist, died of respiratory failure June 18 at Roland Park Place. She was 91.
Shirley Esther Silverberg, the daughter of a movie theater owner, was born in Greenville, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she spent her early years.
When she was a teenager, her family moved to Baltimore after her father took over ownership of the Park Theate in the 1100 block of N. Broadway.
Growing up, Mrs. Handelsman and her sister and brother spent a lot of time watching movies.
"They saw all the films, and my mom grew up a film critic. The more melodramatic, the better," said a son, Stephen H. Handelsman of Bethesda, who is a political and foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News in Washington.
Mrs. Handelsman met and fell in love with Jacob C. Handelsman, a young Johns Hopkins medical student from Elizabeth, N.J.
"Her parents were in Florida, and the regular ticket seller was ill, so Shirley had to go down to the ticket booth and fill in," said Dr. Handelsman, a retired Baltimore surgeon. "Some of the guys said, "Did you see the girl at the Park? She's a knockout.' So I went down there and later married her."
The couple married in 1944.
After Dr. Handelsman returned from World War II and established his practice, they lived in Howard Park before moving in 1956 to a home on Logan Road in Owings Mills.
In addition to raising her four children, Mrs. Handelsman actively supported her husband's medical career.
"That was hard," her son said. "He left the house at dawn and came home any time after 7:30 p.m. Decades of working 12-hour days. He'd get called away on emergencies, and it would spoil their plans, but she never complained."
For years, a telephone sat on the table in the family's dining room, where during dinner Dr. Handelsman would take calls from patients or their families.
Mr. Handelsman recalled his father's description of a "biological function that hopefully was working better after surgery as kind of gross," which caused laughter around the table.
"We just laughed and my mom led the laughter," he said. "That was life in the Handelsman house."
In the late 1940s, Mrs. Handelsman became interested in the work of Planned Parenthood.
