Marjorie Wolinsky
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, December 28, 2022
Born: March 9, 1918
Died: December, 2022, age 104
Married: Dr. Emanuel Wolinsky
Children: Douglas, Peter
A brick at the Saranac Laboratory has been dedicated in the name of Marjorie Claster Wolinsky. Marjorie Claster Wolinsky left New York City for Saranac Lake’s Trudeau Sanatorium in 1939, when she was just 20 years old. She remained a patient at the Sanatorium for six years. Marjorie compared staying at the Sanatorium to college. It was, she said, “just a wonderful gathering of people” and that she “made some of the best friends” while at Trudeau. In 1945, Marjorie met her husband, Emanuel Wolinsky, who was also curing at the Sanatorium. Emanuel was a graduate of Cornell medical school, and after recovering from TB, he went on to become an accomplished research scientist.
A talented pianist, Marjorie became part of the Saranac Lake Concert Society, which brought concerts by world class musicians to Saranac Lake. The performers would take the train to Westport, then get picked up and driven to Saranac Lake, where they were housed by the Wolinskys and other families. Marjorie and Emanuel moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1956, after the Sanatorium closed, but they would return to Saranac Lake every summer. Marjorie will be celebrating her 100th birthday on March 9, 2018. What she remembers about Saranac Lake and Trudeau Sanatorium was “warmth, friendship, love.”
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, December 28, 2022
Marjorie Wolinsky
Marjorie Wolinsky, former resident of Saranac Lake, passed peacefully just shy of her 105th birthday.
Marjorie was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in 1918.
During the Depression, her family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she attended Hunter College. In her senior year, she contracted tuberculosis and was sent to cure at the Trudeau Sanitorium in 1936. She spent the next 20 years in Saranac Lake. There, she met her future husband, Emanual Wolinsky, who contracted TB while in his final years at Cornell Medical School.
Marjorie and Manny were married in 1946. They remained in Saranac Lake while Manny and Bill Steenken, working out of the Saranac Lake Laboratory, carried out pioneering research into the effective drug treatment of tuberculosis. They lived in various locations, including Breezy Acres, the old Cantwell Estates, and the nurses’ quarters inside the gates of Trudeau.
Marjorie was an accomplished classical pianist; she taught music appreciation and helped sponsor a number of well-known classical musicians to come perform in the Tri-Lakes area.
Marjorie and Manny established a close circle of friends in Saranac Lake. They loved driving their Lyman from Duso’s Marina out to Knobby Island on Lower Saranac Lake, where they had a tent platform.
Their two sons, Douglas (1951) and Peter (1953), were born in Saranac Lake.
In 1956, with a cure for TB available, Trudeau Sanatorium closed and the Wolinskys moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Manny established the infectious disease department at one of the city hospitals.
Marjorie continued to play piano, earned a master’s degree in teaching, and helped to establish the auxiliary at Manny’s hospital. Saranac Lake remained a focal point, and the family returned almost every summer, renting a camp on Kiwassa Lake.
Manny passed way in 2012, and Douglas in 2020. Marjorie moved to assisted living in Maine in 2013. She remained active and sociable to her final days. She is survived by her son Peter and his wife Marcia, her daughter-in-law Anne McLellan, and grandchildren Max, Jonathan, and Jessica.
