THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504070193
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
EVERY NOW AND THEN, somebody comes along who can do everything.
Zelma Goodman Rivin is one of them.
For as long as many people in Portsmouth can remember, she has been in the middle of the action.
``She believes her community is so important that she has spent an abnormally large percentage of her adult life in fostering its civic life, its cultural and educational life and its religious life,'' John Paul Hanbury said when he nominated Rivin to be Portsmouth's First Citizen. ``She continues, even today, to devote herself to improving the welfare and educational opportunities of her city, region, state and nation.''
Hanbury and Anne Hyde Long, both former First Citizens, were among those who nominated Rivin for this year's award. She will be honored as First Citizen for 1994 at a 6:30 p.m. banquet Monday at the Holiday Inn Portsmouth Waterfront.
``She has accomplished more toward the development and improvement of her community than anyone I have known in my 40 years of residency in the city,'' Long said.
Thick files of newspaper clippings trace her activities in Portsmouth back to the early 1950s.
Thirty years ago, in 1965, a newspaper reporter wrote, ``Bernard and Zelma Rivin are well-known for time-consuming interests in the community and for their many civic-minded projects.''
Nevermind that she was vital to the operation of The Famous, the ladies-ready-to-wear store started by her mother, Belle Goodman, and later operated by the Rivins. Nevermind that she raised four children. Nevermind all the other personal activities that most people use as excuses to avoid becoming involved in the community.
Zelma Rivin, 73, always seems to have time to take on anything she believes will be good for Portsmouth. But she never agrees to do anything she doesn't expect to do.
``When you were in the retail business, whatever was needed, you did it,'' she said.
Her early experiences at The Famous with her mother undoubtedly set the stage for the rest of Rivin's life.
Goodman was a feminist, an independent woman who started The Famous with $2,500 she had squirreled away in a building-and-loan account, her daughter said. ``It was money she had left over from the household expenses.''
Rivin said she has been independent since she was a little girl.
``I had to be. My father was ill, and my mother worked all the time at The Famous.''
Goodman had such faith in her small daughter that she would send her alone down High Street to buy shoes at Hofheimer's.
``I couldn't have been much more than 5 years old, when I remember being sent to buy my own shoes. She would be busy and couldn't leave the store, so she'd just send me alone.''
Little Zelma always was ahead of herself. At 3, she started first grade at Miss Ruby Williams' school on North Street. By the time she went to public schools at age 7, she was in the fourth grade.
``I graduated at 15 (from Woodrow Wilson High) and went off to college. I went to Emerson College in Boston because I already was involved with the Norfolk Little Theater, and Rose Willis at the theater had gone to Emerson.''
When her precocious daughter was 13, Goodman took her to New York for the first time. As they sorted through the year's fashion offerings, her mother asked Zelma what she thought of the clothes.
``Then she told me something I'll always remember,'' Rivin said in a recent interview, 60 years later. ``She said, `You'd better like them. It's your bread and butter.' ''
As it turned out, The Famous was the Rivins' bread and butter.
Bernard, a South Dakota native, and Zelma met when she went off to Emerson in Boston, and he was at Harvard. They shared a mutual love for debating and the theater.
After college and the years of Bernard Rivin's military service during World War II, Belle Goodman invited her son-in-law to come to Portsmouth to help run The Famous - and Bernard and Zelma subsequently shared responsibilities at The Famous until it closed in January 1991.
In a recent interview, Zelma Rivin said that even when her kids were young, there were times when The Famous had to come first.
``Once the sportswear buyer quit and I got a call from Bernard saying I had to go to New York that night, so I packed my bag and was on the plane,'' she said. ``And when The Famous burned, all the children were little, but we opened the next day in several locations downtown after working all night.''
Married for 54 years, Bernard and Zelma Rivin still seem to share great pleasure in life. Both remain active in the community.
Zelma Rivin's activities during the year for which she was named First Citizen centered around the city's Cultural Diversity Action Team and the Face-to-Face with Race project, which brings people of all races together in discussion groups.
Rivin became concerned about race problems in 1938 when she transferred to Northwestern University, in suburban Chicago, where she received her bachelor's degree in English and theater.
``It was a big university in a big city, and I thought there would be lots of freedom there,'' she said.
Her first weekend there, the football game was with Michigan.
``The black members of the team were not allowed to stay in the hotel with the white members,'' Rivin said. ``I was terribly disillusioned. I immediately helped organize an interracial conference.''
She's been involved in human relations almost from the day she returned to her hometown in 1946.
Many years ago she was instrumental in the formation of a human relations committee.
``The early race relations committee was about religion, to bring about understanding of religious differences,'' she said. ``Today we must work to bring about understanding between black and white.''
Rivin always has been very involved in the Jewish community. In 1975, when she was elected president of the Temple Sinai Congregation, she was the first woman in this region and one of the few in the nation to assume that role.
In 1966, she was appointed to the Portsmouth School Board.
``Civil rights legislation had integrated the schools and there were many, many problems at that time,'' she said. At the end of two terms, she asked not to be reappointed in 1972 ``to give somebody else an opportunity to serve.''
In 1973, she was the first woman appointed to the Planning Commission and became its chairman in 1977. Before she stepped down in 1980, she had participated in some of the city's most important planning decisions, including the adoption of the first Comprehensive Plan.
During her years on the board, she worked hard at making it more central to the city's effort and at improving communication among city departments.
Meanwhile, she was getting a master's degree in urban studies at Old Dominion University. Her thesis on urban homesteading was published as a book.
``I was engrossed,'' she said. ``It took me several years to get the degree at night because I was working at The Famous.''
Incidentally, during the 1970s Rivin was a part-time professor, teaching communications on the Frederick campus of Tidewater Community College.
Rivin is a strong believer in regionalism as a benefit to all the area.
She was a founder of Help and Emergency Response (HER) Inc., an emergency shelter for battered women in the region, and today serves on its board. She also serves as chairman of the Portsmouth Community Trust and the Jewish Family Service of Tidewater.
Over the years, Rivin has been involved in everything from starting the Portsmouth Little Theater and serving as president of the Portsmouth Branch of the American Association of University Women to being principal of the religious school at Temple Sinai.
The lifetime activities of this multifaceted personality would fill a book.
But, she says, she's not going to stop now or any time if she feels like she's making a contribution.
What's her next project?
``I don't know,'' she responded.
But it may be she's just not ready to talk about it.
She always has said she ``never reveals everything.''
``I've always got an ace in the hole.'' ILLUSTRATION: Cover and inside photos by MARK MITCHELL
First Citizen: Zelma Goodman Rivin [color cover photo]
Zelma Rivin's recent activities have centered around the Cultural
Diversity Action Team.
Zelma Goodman Rivin looks over scrapbooks that contain newspaper
clippings tracing her activities in Portsmouth back to the early
1950s.
File photo
Zelma and Bernard Rivin ran The Famous from 1946 until it closed in
January 1991.
AT A GLANCE
Zelma Goodman Rivin will be honored as the 57th First Citizen of
Portsmouth on Monday at the Holiday Inn Portsmouth Waterfront.
A reception will begin at 6:30 p.m., dinner at 7
The main speaker will be Eva Sayegh Teig, a Virginia Power
executive who formerly worked for the city of Portsmouth. Rabbi
Arthur Steinberg of Temple Sinai will be the master of ceremonies.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY FIRST CITIZEN by CNB