Local Immigrants Have Champion in Senator Oppenheimer

by Harold Wolfson

(November 3, 2005) The local immigrant community has a seemingly unlikely champion: a five-foot-tall, 70-year old woman who is known as a take-no-prisoners tennis player, can out-ski most folks (on double-black diamonds) and lives nearby in a lovely century-old Italian mansion at the end of a 200-foot driveway with a 100-pound dog named Willobee who will jump into your lap if you let him.

Senator Suzie Oppenheimer, relaxing at home, will receive an "Amigo Award" from the Hispanic Resource Center.

She is Suzi Oppenheimer, the area’s eleven-term New York State senator.

“Immigrants are the lifeblood of America,” she told a visitor recently. “Look at New York City. One-third of its residents were born elsewhere. It’s immigration that makes us the unique, successful country that we are.”

Senator Oppenheimer has two immigrants in her own family. Her husband Martin, a former partner of the law firm Proskauer, Rose, came from Nazi Germany with his family as a two-year old and grew up on a chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey. Daughter-in-law Lia came here from Russia when she was eight years old.

On November 17th, Senator Oppenheimer will receive an “Amigo Award” from the Hispanic Resource Center of Mamaroneck and Larchmont at their Rum and Rhumba Fiesta fundraiser at the Orienta Beach Club in recognition of her concern for immigrants. She has been an ongoing dispenser of good advice and support to the immigrant agency. She helped provide state funding for a day laborer site in Columbus Park and, with other community leaders, is trying to obtain a winter shelter for the workers. She also is passionate about providing education for the new arrivals.

“Education is what it is all about,” she said. “It is the great equalizer in America. That’s what permits children to achieve, whether born here or elsewhere.”

Senator Oppenheimer herself, however, comes from a somewhat different background. Her father was a Yale-educated lawyer. And her late mother, Blanche Rosenhirsch, had the wherewithal to dedicate much of her life to charitable causes in New York City.

Although her four children went through the Mamaroneck public schools, Senator Oppenheimer attended a small private girls’ school, the Calhoun School, in Manhattan. She was competitive and tomboyish and played four years of varsity tennis, basketball and volleyball. She did the same at Connecticut College for Women, where she graduated with a degree in economics. She went on to become one of the first women to earn a masters degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

Then it was on to that then-bastion of male dominance, Wall Street, as a financial analyst for L.F Rothschild & Co.

She did not intend to go into politics and government. As a young stay-at-home mother in Mamaroneck, she planned her return to Wall Street. She sharpened her organizational skills as president of the Central School PTA and as president of the Mamaroneck League of Women Voters.

But in 1977 she was lured into running for mayor of Mamaroneck Village against a popular incumbent.

“No one thought I had a chance,” she recalled. “I didn’t think I had a chance. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have run. I ran because I thought this would look good on my resume and I wanted to return to Wall Street.”

But she did win and won three more times, serving for four two-year terms as mayor, before running for the State Senate. She discovered a job, a responsibility and an opportunity she loved better than Wall Street.

Ms. Oppenheimer’s special interests in the Senate have been education, health and the environment. Her particular goal is to increase state sponsorship of a variety of educational programs. “If my husband can go from a chicken farm to Proskauer Rose, others can make it, too,” she said. “Education is the answer.”

Martin Oppenheimer also is chairman of the State Theatre in Lincoln Center, a member of the boards of Lincoln Center, the Public Health School of Columbia University and the Manhattan 92 nd Street Y.

On November 17th, the Hispanic Resource Center will also present four other “Amigo Awards.” Two mayors will be honored: Timothy C. Idoni of New Rochelle and former mayor of Ossining, John Perillo. Both were instrumental in setting up functioning, immigrant-friendly day laborer sites in their communities. Also honored will be Judy Myers, who helped the Resource Center get started and has provided other support, and Rev. Deborah Tammearu of St. Thomas Church, who has been a visible booster of the center’s work and was responsible for making space available for the center’s immigrant classes and workshops.

For information or tickets to the Rum and Rhumba Fiesta phone 835-1512.

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