David Weinberg, the retired owner of an auto body repair business who was a sibling of billionaire philanthropist Harry Weinberg, died of pneumonia June 16 at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 100.
Born in Baltimore, he was the fifth of seven children born to of Joseph Weinberg, a Polish immigrant who settled at 2028 Eagle St. in Southwest Baltimore with his wife, Sarah. His siblings included Henry, Harry, William, Nathan and Sidney Weinberg, and Betty Fine.
He attended Samuel Morse Elementary School on Christian Street.
After living in their crowded Eagle Street home, the family moved around the corner to Wilkens Avenue to a house that had indoor plumbing.
"My father's memory was perfect," said Mr. Weinberg's son, Jay Weinberg of Owings Mills. "At the end of his life he could recall all his Eagle Street neighbors. He was sharp. ... Last year, he showed me where he played sandlot ball and where he'd flip pennies against the corner store wall. He was amazing."
When he was in his teens, Mr. Weinberg began working for Camden Body & Radiator, an automobile body and fender repair business at Howard and Camden streets that his father had founded.
"My father worked with hand tools. There was no automatic machinery. He was known for its quality and his strong work ethic," said his son.
He worked at the firm, which later was named Fender, from the 1920s through the 1980s. He participated in moving the business to Park Avenue and Biddle Street in the 1940s and to Pennsylvania and Fulton avenues in the 1950s. By then, he worked with his brothers Sidney and Nathan.
During World War II, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to a motor pool in India. He told family members he had 18 people working under him.
The Weinberg family kept in contact with their cousins who remained in Europe. After the end of World War II, when the extent of the Holocaust became known, word came to them that a cousin, Regina Ehrlich, was living in Paris as a displaced person. Before the war, her father, a musician, died in New York while trying to make money to bring his family to the United States. Her mother and sister died during the war.
Mr. Weinberg and his brothers Harry and William took a boat to Europe, where they met Ms. Ehrlich for the first time. They discovered they could not bring her to the U.S. because an immigration quota was full.
"They went to the consulate. They found the only way she could come to Baltimore was for her to marry a veteran. My father was a veteran. Harry and William went back home and left my father to get the papers together. My parents married in Paris. She spoke a little English but they both spoke Yiddish," said daughter Amy Gur of Pikesville. "And the marriage took. It was like a love affair that lasted for 63 years. They were soul mates."
After settling in Baltimore, they had a formal wedding at the family home.
Mr. Weinberg remained active in the auto body repair business except for a short period when he assisted his brother Harry. His brother, who invested in struggling transit companies, had purchased the Dallas bus system. Mr. Weinberg moved to Texas and remained there until 1963 when he moved to Scranton, Pa., where Harry Weinberg also owned bus lines.
The transit lines that Harry Weinberg owned and later sold were part of a fortune that was estimated at $1 billion when he died in 1990. He created a charity, the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation.
After leaving Scranton, Mr. Weinberg rejoined his auto business and moved it one more time, to Amos Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, where it remains.
In the 1970s, he brought in his son-in-law, Mordehai Gur, and his son and taught them the auto repair business. Mr. Weinberg retired about 1980 after buying a winter home in Florida.
He was a donor to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish National Fund, The Associated and the Wounded Warriors Project.
He belonged to Chizuk Amuno Congregation and Tiferes Yisroel.
Services were held June 18 at Sol Levinson and Bros.
In addition to his son and daughter, survivors include four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. His wife of 63 years died in 2011.