![\"Goldie](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/clark-university-goldie-michelson-magazine-2-133x300-1.jpg\")
Clark in 1936.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Two-year-old Goldie Corash, her mother, and two brothers emigrated from Russia\u2019s Pale of Settlement to Worcester in 1904. They joined her father, Max Corash, who\u2019d come to the U.S. six months earlier and opened a dry goods store in the city\u2019s Water Street section, home to a thriving Jewish immigrant community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Corashes lived a comfortable and relatively privileged life, thanks to their work ethic. Goldie would acknowledge her good fortune, and its attendant responsibilities, in an interview published in the 2001 Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research annual report, in which she recalled her father\u2019s words: \u201cHe always said that this country had been so good to him; that those of us who are lucky should look out for those who have less.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goldie threw herself into the theater while attending Worcester\u2019s schools, whether it was acting, finding costumes, or working the lights. Her zest for people was noted early. Goldie\u2019s senior-year profile in Worcester\u2019s Classical High School 1919 yearbook described \u201clittle Goldfish\u201d as \u201cwitty, clever, and jolly, and so agreeable that wherever she goes she has a host of friends. \u2026 She has an inexhaustible store of jokes which could make the coldest person laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her yearbook from the Women\u2019s College (later Pembroke College) of Brown University, where she earned her bachelor\u2019s degree in sociology in 1924, depicted a similar persona: \u201cNot a blonde, as her name would suggest, nor from New York, as her style suggests, nor does she vamp professors as her eyes suggest. In more ways than one, Goldie suggests one thing, and does another. Could anyone else dance so unceasingly, step out so often, yet be the pride of her professors\u2019 hearts? No, say we emphatically. Goldie\u2019s ambition lies in the field of social service work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After graduation, she returned to Worcester and secured a $25-a-week job at Worcester State Hospital. When she informed her father about her newfound employment, he took $25 from his pocket and told Goldie that he would pay his \u201clittle girl\u201d the same sum if she didn\u2019t accept the position. \u201cMy father was old-fashioned in that respect,\u201d Goldie told CLARK<\/em> alumni magazine in 2012. \u201cHe was not happy that the job was at the state hospital, and that it was mostly men working there. He didn\u2019t think it was a proper place for a girl.\u201d Goldie eventually turned down the job, and her father\u2019s money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One night during her first summer out of school, her brother Harry Corash \u201921 brought home a friend for dinner. David Michelson had been working in Worcester and was scheduled to return to his home state of New Jersey the next day. Then he met Goldie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe said when he saw me walk down the stairs he had to get to a phone because his plans had changed,\u201d Goldie recalled in the 2012 interview. \u201cHe knew he wasn\u2019t going home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1926, Goldie became the first bride to walk down the aisle at Worcester\u2019s just-built Temple Emanuel with her new husband. That same year, Clark\u2019s own Robert Goddard ushered in the Space Age with the launch of his liquid-fueled rocket. The next year, Babe Ruth hit a staggering 60 home runs, Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, and \u201cThe Jazz Singer,\u201d Hollywood\u2019s first feature-length \u201ctalkie,\u201d was released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daughter Renee was born in 1931, and in September 1935, Goldie re-entered Clark (she\u2019d earlier taken sociology courses there) to complete her master\u2019s degree, the same month in which Adolph Hitler enacted the Nuremberg Laws in Germany that excluded German Jews from citizenship in the Reich. Her thesis would be titled \u201cA Citizenship Survey of Worcester Jewry,\u201d which examined why Jewish immigrants were reluctant to pursue U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She would not be the last in her family to attend Clark University. Seventy-seven years after Goldie earned her degree, her great-granddaughter, Deanna Minsky \u201913, graduated from Clark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u21d4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldie\u2019s compassion for others drove her to volunteer with numerous community service agencies, helping those who needed a hand. She had her personal tragedies \u2014 her beloved mother was killed in a car accident \u2014 and she experienced the sadness that went with outliving her brothers and longtime friends. And, as a life member of the women\u2019s Zionist organization Hadassah, she was not one to ignore the horrors that beset Jews in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, Goldie lived life with appreciation and optimism, gratitude and energy, personal discipline and curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rabbi Seth Bernstein, who served at Worcester\u2019s Temple Emanuel Sinai from 1986 to 2011, visited Goldie regularly from the time she was in her mid-80s to just a few years before she died. He recalls Goldie once asking him, \u201cRabbi, have you ever seen a cherry blossom like those on my tree? It\u2019s the most beautiful cherry tree in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTalk about carpe diem. That was one woman who seized every day,\u201d Bernstein says. \u201cShe only saw the joy in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldie had a gift for turning strangers into friends, says Sima Kustanovich, a concert pianist who has been with Clark\u2019s music program for many years. A Russian Jew who, with her husband and son, moved from Leningrad to Worcester in 1979, Kustanovich was among the many immigrants whom Goldie took under her wing. \u201cShe was the first person who spoke to me in English, even though I didn\u2019t know it at all,\u201d Kustanovich told Chabad.org. \u201cShe did amazing things to help me many times in my life. Our close relationship was more than friendship \u2014 she was like family to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Natalie Palley, who teaches English as a Second Language at Clark\u2019s American Language and Culture Institute, shared a friendship with Goldie for more than 20 years. They often lunched at Goldie\u2019s home to exchange news about what was going on in their own and their families\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two women first met at a morning Midrash (Biblestudy group) led by Rabbi Bernstein. On that day, Palley had brought along her toddler, and the little boy was busily playing when Palley drew him aside to meet Goldie. \u201cHe just stared at her, and then a long rush of drool came out of his mouth,\u201d Palley recalls. \u201cGoldie beamed back at him, saying \u2018I\u2019m in love.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldie\u2019s passion for theater manifested itself in the regular pilgrimages she and David made to New York City for Broadway marathons \u2014 seeing as many as four plays in a single weekend. She became a well-known actress, director and teacher in the Worcester area, bringing theater to children and adults in schools, clubs and area nursing homes. Goldie and David even retrofitted their basement into a theater \u2014 complete with stage and footlights \u2014 where she taught neighborhood children the elements of drama and music, and how to perform without fear and anxiety. The laundry room doubled as a dressing room, with a star on the door, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she had trouble finding performance venues, Clark offered her unfettered access to Daniels Theater in Atwood Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can\u2019t remember when I wasn\u2019t coaching a play,\u201d she once said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I was happiest \u2014 when I had my hands on a production.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toward the end of her life, Paul Martin \u201966 helped Goldie with small household projects and drove her where her legs couldn\u2019t take her. The two spent many hours chatting, especially when he transported Goldie to and from her daughter\u2019s and granddaughter\u2019s homes in Maine. On those trips, she would sit beside him in the passenger seat, and they would chat the entire time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe always had things to talk about,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes when I\u2019d stop by, she\u2019d say, \u2018Paul, you got a minute?\u2019 and she\u2019d start reciting Shakespeare. It was unbelievable the way she was reciting this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin was not the only person to marvel at Goldie\u2019s powers of recall. Bernstein tells how she was filmed for a course at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. When the videographer asked her to quote something from a play, she asked which one. \u201cHamlet,\u201d he replied. \u201cWell, what act? What scene?\u201d Goldie asked. She then launched into a soliloquy, Bernstein remembers, \u201cand the guy\u2019s jaw just dropped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u21d4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tom Dolan \u201962, M.A.Ed. \u201963, a longtime fixture in the Clark administration, figures he knew Goldie for about 45 years, having met her through her brother Harry, with whom Dolan enjoyed frequent tennis matches (Harry endowed Clark\u2019s Corash Tennis Courts). Dolan describes Goldie as a \u201cRenaissance person. She was au courant on any subject \u2014 didn\u2019t make any difference what you wanted to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her intellectual curiosity was fueled by the smorgasbord of political, social, economic, artistic, and technological developments in the 20th century, surely one of the most rapidly changing epochs in human history. Her long life gave her the opportunity to ponder and respond to not just the beginning or end of important events, but entire cycles of change: the rise and fall of Germany (twice) and of the Soviet Union; the entire span of Chairman Mao\u2019s reign in China; World Wars I and II, and wars in Vietnam, Korea and the Persian Gulf; the struggles over apartheid in South Africa and the turmoil of our own civil rights movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A play about Goldie\u2019s life in the 1920s and \u201930s might depict her as an emerging adult against a backdrop of the Jazz Age, Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and FDR\u2019s New Deal. She saw, in 1920, women in the U.S. gain the right to vote in federal elections. And a year later, across the Atlantic \u2014 while Goldie was pursuing her bachelor\u2019s degree and acting with the Komians, an all-women\u2019s theater group at Pembroke College \u2014 Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty creating the Irish Free State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldie witnessed the dawn of the nuclear age and the digital age, and, in between, the Age of Aquarius. Though she passed away before the election of a new president, she could have compared the administrations of 19 U.S. presidents who held office during her lifetime, from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u21d4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not surprisingly, some of Goldie\u2019s most special philanthropic bequests married her love of theater with her devotion to Clark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She endowed the David and Goldie Michelson Drama Fund, which supports many Clark theater initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI cannot tell you how important this fund is to Clark\u2019s theater program,\u201d says Professor Gino DiIorio \u201983, program director for theater arts since 2000. \u201cIt\u2019s allowed our program to grow and thrive. We use it to support guest artists, classes, workshops \u2014 I can\u2019t list all the things we\u2019ve used it for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoldie would always come to shows and watch students work. She never wanted a big deal to be made for her,\u201d he says. \u201cGoldie was that kind of benefactor, the kind of person who enjoyed watching students thrive on their own. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: \u2018An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.\u2019 Clark\u2019s theater program is the lengthened shadow of one very special woman, Goldie Michelson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2009, Goldie made a generous gift to refurbish and rebuild the Little Center, including its black box performance space, which was renamed Michelson Theater. The marquee bearing her name provides visibility to the theater and announces current productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldie\u2019s remarkable achievement of living past the century mark began to attract notice when she was about 108 and still going strong. Maine\u2019s Senator Susan Collins sent her an American flag that had flown over the White House, which Goldie proudly displayed in her living room. And after qualifying as a supercentenarian at the age of 110, she received a photograph and congratulatory letter from President Obama (she sent him a thank-you note).<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two brief months this spring and summer, when she was officially the oldest person in the United States, media outlets from around the world flocked to publicize Goldie\u2019s story. She died quietly at home, two floors above her basement theater \u2014 the final step on her wonderful walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt never occurred to me that I would live this long,\u201d Goldie once told an interviewer. \u201cI just went on and on, and I\u2019ve loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When she passed away this summer, Clark\u2019s oldest alumna (M.A. '36) had lived nearly 114 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15650,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"var(--clarku-color-deep-red)","story_headerImg":15650,"section_label":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[223,239],"displayed_author":[381],"featured":[],"topic":[232,277],"class_list":["post-15649","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clark-community","category-worcester-world","displayed_author-anne-gibson-ph-d-95","topic-alumni","topic-clark-university-magazine"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Goldie](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/clark-university-goldie-michelson-magazine-3-242x300-1.jpg\")