Executive director is stepping down after 10 years
By DR. IRVING LERNER
The buzz throughout the St Paul community is that she may have been on the job as long as the Yankee’s star pitcher Mariano Rivera. So it was no surprise to those in the know that as Rivera, at the top of his game, announced his retirement, Rena Waxman did the same.
As Rivera’s American League pitching career was distinguished, so Waxman’s has been in the world of Jewish social service. And as Rivera is admired throughout baseball as a mensch, so Waxman is recognized in her world as fitting that description.
But enough about baseball. Rena Waxman is a star in her own right. In a forty year career in social service, she qualifies as a happy wanderer: Originally from Cleveland, she lived in New York, Columbus, San Diego, Winnipeg, Milwaukee, Miami and Portland, Oregon before coming to St Paul.
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Rena Waxman (Photo: Courtesy of JFS)
Married as a 20-year-old sophomore at Ohio State University, she transferred to San Diego State and then to the University of Winnipeg where she completed her undergraduate degree and at twenty-two had her first child.
In her three years in Winnipeg a second son was born, and in Milwaukee two daughters followed.
While raising four youngsters, she somehow found the time and energy to obtain a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. These four children have blessed Rena with twenty-five grandchildren! “I count my wealth in grandchildren.” Four of those grandchildren live in New York City, four in Chicago, and the others in Israel.
During those early years in San Diego her husband was the founding principal of the San Diego Hebrew Day School, and in Winnipeg he became principal of the Wolensky Collegiate Jewish Day High School. Their move to Milwaukee was for his career, and there she began her career in Jewish Family Service. Later the family moved to Miami for two years where Rena served as a medical social worker at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Two years later Rena was invited back to Milwaukee to be the Director of Senior Services at JFS so the family moved back, this time by virtue of Rena’s job. During this second Milwaukee stint of about twenty years, she also became the Director of Resettlement, began a JFS Employment Service was promoted to Deputy Director of JFS. During this period she and her husband agreed to an amicable divorce, so in addition to her considerable professional responsibilities, Rena became a single mother with four children age fourteen and under.
In 1999 with grown children on their own, she accepted the position of Executive Director of the Portland, Oregon JFS. This began a professionally fulfilling four years, but at a distance from her family.
Consequently, when the St Paul JFS recruited her for the position of Executive Director, she was thrilled to accept. She came back to the Midwest in 2003 and her ten years service represents one tenth of the entire lifetime of JFS of St Paul. She says of St Paul, “It’s the kind of community I like, mid-size, lacking the pretensions of some larger communities … a Bonsai tree — small and beautiful.”
Though she describes her years here as a “turbulent decade,” she has piloted the organization to noteworthy accomplishments. Despite the economic bust of 2008 when the JFS budget necessarily dropped $200,000 from the 2003 level of $1.2 million, by 2013 this had rebounded to $1.5 million.
She directed the completion of the resettlement of a substantial Russian émigré community and materially enhanced senior services as JFS led a multi-agency Federal NORC program to help seniors stay in their own homes. Similarly, JFS has partnered with the State Community Service/Service Development program, evolving the DAPS program designed to identify and deal with the often overlooked issue of depression among seniors.
She has also fostered engagement with St Paul’s Orthodox community, so that currently JFS works with all of the Jewish congregations. Similarly, she has promoted increased partnerships with the other social service agencies, raising awareness of JFS and the high quality of service it provides.
So an era ends. Rena is not retiring, but starting a new phase of her life. Priorities now include significant travel. Her base of operation will likely be Chicago near her daughter and family, but she will also travel to spend time with her elderly mother in Cleveland, her son and his family in NYC, and in Israel where a son and daughter and seventeen grandchildren live. Moreover, she intends to find quality time for personal growth by taking classes in Judaica as well as physics, philosophy, and music. She’ll commit her ”spare time” as a volunteer for children’s literacy.
Who knows what Mariano Rivera intends to do with next chapter, but there’s no way it can top Rena Waxman’s plans.
(American Jewish World, 12.6.13)
