Marion Brechner, 98, former co-owner of television station WMDT 47 in Salisbury, died Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011, in New York, where she had been staying for several months. She lived in Winter Park, Fla.
Born of immigrant parents in Chicago in 1912 and the youngest of three girls, Marion Brody completed public schools and became a stenographer and legal secretary in Chicago.
In 1933, she accepted a telegraphed offer to be a junior stenographer — for a three-month assignment — with the government in Washington. That three-month assignment led to a decade of government work, including work with the War Department starting prior to World War II. It was in Washington, too, that she met her husband to be, Joseph Brechner, a writer of radio programs for the War Department and an aspiring novelist and playwright. They married in 1941, and Joe joined the Army Air Corps the next year.
After the war, in 1946, Joe and a business partner, with the behind-the-scenes support of Marion, sought and got a license to build a radio station in Silver Spring, Md., which led to the couple operating radio stations in several other eastern states, including WLOF-AM in Orlando in 1956. Two years later, with other investors, they were granted a license for a TV station in Orlando, which became, as it remains today, WFTV Channel 9.
The family, with their 13-year-old son, Berl, became permanent residents of Orlando in 1960. Marion assumed full-time work at the TV station during the 1960s, including serving as producer of a daily hourlong live variety show, "Orbit." That station won many broadcast and service awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation Award for General Overall Performance and Outstanding Service to the Community and the Nation.
While the family sold its interest in Chanel 9 in 1984, it continued in the broadcast business, with Marion actively involved with stations in Kansas, Ohio and Maryland. The Maryland TV station, WMDT-TV, an ABC affiliate, is still operated by the family and a few years ago, was the national winner of the National Association of Broadcasting's Service to Children Award.
In Orlando, she had served as president of the Friends of the Orlando Library, as an officer with The Shakespeare Festival Theater and was involved in development of the Jewish Pavilion, a service organization for seniors living in assisted living and nursing home facilities. More recently, she made a major gift that established the Joseph L. Brechner Research Center at the Orange County Regional History Center, including the donation of important historical papers and documents from Joseph Brechner relating to central Florida's history and civil rights movement during the 1950s and through the 1970s.
She was also a major supporter of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., the Marion Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida and the Anti-Defamation League, where she established the Joseph L. Brechner Fellowship Program.
She was an avid reader, supporter of the arts and culture and inveterate traveler, traveling with her husband and then independently after his death in 1990 to every continent and to scores of countries. As journalists, they traveled to Vietnam in 1967 at the height of the war there.
She was a member of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Orlando.
She is survived by her son, Berl, daughter-in-law Katherine, and their children, Elana, Joshua and Kara.
She will be interred at Temple Israel Cemetery near Orlando on Monday.
Arrangements are being handled by Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel in Orlando.
Published in The Daily Times on Jan. 9, 2011
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Born of immigrant parents in Chicago in 1912 and the youngest of three girls, Marion Brody completed public schools and became a stenographer and legal secretary in Chicago.
In 1933, she accepted a telegraphed offer to be a junior stenographer — for a three-month assignment — with the government in Washington. That three-month assignment led to a decade of government work, including work with the War Department starting prior to World War II. It was in Washington, too, that she met her husband to be, Joseph Brechner, a writer of radio programs for the War Department and an aspiring novelist and playwright. They married in 1941, and Joe joined the Army Air Corps the next year.
After the war, in 1946, Joe and a business partner, with the behind-the-scenes support of Marion, sought and got a license to build a radio station in Silver Spring, Md., which led to the couple operating radio stations in several other eastern states, including WLOF-AM in Orlando in 1956. Two years later, with other investors, they were granted a license for a TV station in Orlando, which became, as it remains today, WFTV Channel 9.
The family, with their 13-year-old son, Berl, became permanent residents of Orlando in 1960. Marion assumed full-time work at the TV station during the 1960s, including serving as producer of a daily hourlong live variety show, "Orbit." That station won many broadcast and service awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation Award for General Overall Performance and Outstanding Service to the Community and the Nation.
While the family sold its interest in Chanel 9 in 1984, it continued in the broadcast business, with Marion actively involved with stations in Kansas, Ohio and Maryland. The Maryland TV station, WMDT-TV, an ABC affiliate, is still operated by the family and a few years ago, was the national winner of the National Association of Broadcasting's Service to Children Award.
In Orlando, she had served as president of the Friends of the Orlando Library, as an officer with The Shakespeare Festival Theater and was involved in development of the Jewish Pavilion, a service organization for seniors living in assisted living and nursing home facilities. More recently, she made a major gift that established the Joseph L. Brechner Research Center at the Orange County Regional History Center, including the donation of important historical papers and documents from Joseph Brechner relating to central Florida's history and civil rights movement during the 1950s and through the 1970s.
She was also a major supporter of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., the Marion Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida and the Anti-Defamation League, where she established the Joseph L. Brechner Fellowship Program.
She was an avid reader, supporter of the arts and culture and inveterate traveler, traveling with her husband and then independently after his death in 1990 to every continent and to scores of countries. As journalists, they traveled to Vietnam in 1967 at the height of the war there.
She was a member of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Orlando.
She is survived by her son, Berl, daughter-in-law Katherine, and their children, Elana, Joshua and Kara.
She will be interred at Temple Israel Cemetery near Orlando on Monday.
Arrangements are being handled by Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel in Orlando.
Published in The Daily Times on Jan. 9, 2011
Print | View Guest Book |
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/delmarvanow/obituary.aspx?n=marion-brechner&pid=147660286#sthash.TOQJWxxI.dpuf
Marion Brechner, 98, former co-owner of television station WMDT 47 in Salisbury, died Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011, in New York, where she had been staying for several months. She lived in Winter Park, Fla.
Born of immigrant parents in Chicago in 1912 and the youngest of three girls, Marion Brody completed public schools and became a stenographer and legal secretary in Chicago.
In 1933, she accepted a telegraphed offer to be a junior stenographer — for a three-month assignment — with the government in Washington. That three-month assignment led to a decade of government work, including work with the War Department starting prior to World War II. It was in Washington, too, that she met her husband to be, Joseph Brechner, a writer of radio programs for the War Department and an aspiring novelist and playwright. They married in 1941, and Joe joined the Army Air Corps the next year.
After the war, in 1946, Joe and a business partner, with the behind-the-scenes support of Marion, sought and got a license to build a radio station in Silver Spring, Md., which led to the couple operating radio stations in several other eastern states, including WLOF-AM in Orlando in 1956. Two years later, with other investors, they were granted a license for a TV station in Orlando, which became, as it remains today, WFTV Channel 9.
The family, with their 13-year-old son, Berl, became permanent residents of Orlando in 1960. Marion assumed full-time work at the TV station during the 1960s, including serving as producer of a daily hourlong live variety show, "Orbit." That station won many broadcast and service awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation Award for General Overall Performance and Outstanding Service to the Community and the Nation.
While the family sold its interest in Chanel 9 in 1984, it continued in the broadcast business, with Marion actively involved with stations in Kansas, Ohio and Maryland. The Maryland TV station, WMDT-TV, an ABC affiliate, is still operated by the family and a few years ago, was the national winner of the National Association of Broadcasting's Service to Children Award.
In Orlando, she had served as president of the Friends of the Orlando Library, as an officer with The Shakespeare Festival Theater and was involved in development of the Jewish Pavilion, a service organization for seniors living in assisted living and nursing home facilities. More recently, she made a major gift that established the Joseph L. Brechner Research Center at the Orange County Regional History Center, including the donation of important historical papers and documents from Joseph Brechner relating to central Florida's history and civil rights movement during the 1950s and through the 1970s.
She was also a major supporter of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., the Marion Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida and the Anti-Defamation League, where she established the Joseph L. Brechner Fellowship Program.
She was an avid reader, supporter of the arts and culture and inveterate traveler, traveling with her husband and then independently after his death in 1990 to every continent and to scores of countries. As journalists, they traveled to Vietnam in 1967 at the height of the war there.
She was a member of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Orlando.
She is survived by her son, Berl, daughter-in-law Katherine, and their children, Elana, Joshua and Kara.
She will be interred at Temple Israel Cemetery near Orlando on Monday.
Arrangements are being handled by Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel in Orlando.
Published in The Daily Times on Jan. 9, 2011
Print | View Guest Book |
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/delmarvanow/obituary.aspx?n=marion-brechner&pid=147660286#sthash.TOQJWxxI.dpuf
Born of immigrant parents in Chicago in 1912 and the youngest of three girls, Marion Brody completed public schools and became a stenographer and legal secretary in Chicago.
In 1933, she accepted a telegraphed offer to be a junior stenographer — for a three-month assignment — with the government in Washington. That three-month assignment led to a decade of government work, including work with the War Department starting prior to World War II. It was in Washington, too, that she met her husband to be, Joseph Brechner, a writer of radio programs for the War Department and an aspiring novelist and playwright. They married in 1941, and Joe joined the Army Air Corps the next year.
After the war, in 1946, Joe and a business partner, with the behind-the-scenes support of Marion, sought and got a license to build a radio station in Silver Spring, Md., which led to the couple operating radio stations in several other eastern states, including WLOF-AM in Orlando in 1956. Two years later, with other investors, they were granted a license for a TV station in Orlando, which became, as it remains today, WFTV Channel 9.
The family, with their 13-year-old son, Berl, became permanent residents of Orlando in 1960. Marion assumed full-time work at the TV station during the 1960s, including serving as producer of a daily hourlong live variety show, "Orbit." That station won many broadcast and service awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation Award for General Overall Performance and Outstanding Service to the Community and the Nation.
While the family sold its interest in Chanel 9 in 1984, it continued in the broadcast business, with Marion actively involved with stations in Kansas, Ohio and Maryland. The Maryland TV station, WMDT-TV, an ABC affiliate, is still operated by the family and a few years ago, was the national winner of the National Association of Broadcasting's Service to Children Award.
In Orlando, she had served as president of the Friends of the Orlando Library, as an officer with The Shakespeare Festival Theater and was involved in development of the Jewish Pavilion, a service organization for seniors living in assisted living and nursing home facilities. More recently, she made a major gift that established the Joseph L. Brechner Research Center at the Orange County Regional History Center, including the donation of important historical papers and documents from Joseph Brechner relating to central Florida's history and civil rights movement during the 1950s and through the 1970s.
She was also a major supporter of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., the Marion Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida and the Anti-Defamation League, where she established the Joseph L. Brechner Fellowship Program.
She was an avid reader, supporter of the arts and culture and inveterate traveler, traveling with her husband and then independently after his death in 1990 to every continent and to scores of countries. As journalists, they traveled to Vietnam in 1967 at the height of the war there.
She was a member of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Orlando.
She is survived by her son, Berl, daughter-in-law Katherine, and their children, Elana, Joshua and Kara.
She will be interred at Temple Israel Cemetery near Orlando on Monday.
Arrangements are being handled by Beth Shalom Memorial Chapel in Orlando.
Published in The Daily Times on Jan. 9, 2011
Print | View Guest Book |
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/delmarvanow/obituary.aspx?n=marion-brechner&pid=147660286#sthash.TOQJWxxI.dpuf
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