Volunteer Norma Rackow Perlman dies at 93
Norma Rackow Perlman, who for years opened the doors of her East Hills home to exchange students, has died at age 94. Credit: Handout
When Norma Rackow Perlman of Roslyn Heights was 92, she indulged her habit of posing next to a fancy motorcycle on the street and sending the picture to her daughter.
"Darling, I just hope that when you are 92 years old you will be having as much fun as I am now," she later told her daughter.
That summed up her mother's life, Janice Perlman of Upper Grandview recalled this week as she continued planning a memorial service for her mother. That service is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. April 16 at the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay.
Norma Perlman was five days short of her 94th birthday when she died of natural causes at her home Feb. 1.
She had been a whirlwind force in the area, a host to hundreds of foreign-exchange students at her home over the years, a mainstay of Roslyn's Bryant Public Library, a founder of a local Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship fund and a volunteer and activist in local schools, family members said.
She was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 6, 1917; she met and married Ely Perlman while both were working in Harlem Hospital. She was studying for her master's degree in bacteriology and he was in medical school.
They married in 1941 and lived in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens before moving in 1951 into the house on Crescent Lane where she spent her final days, surrounded by her family. Ely Perlman died in 1988.
Her son, Andrew Perlman of Palo Alto, Calif., said that as a youngster he can remember the flow of foreign-exchange students through the house. "My bedroom was often used by visiting students, and I was relegated to the couch," he said.
Both son and daughter used the word "positive" repeatedly in characterizing their mother. "She could extract the goodness in people," her son said.
Her daughter said her mother had "a broad swath of tolerance for people that others shied away from."
Norma Perlman was elected to the Bryant Public Library board in 1964. She became board president in 1971 and remained on the board until 1979, helping guide the library through a major expansion.
She helped establish Roslyn's Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship fund in 1985 and was honored by the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church last year for her "many years of inspiring hope in the Roslyn community."
In addition to her son and daughter, she is survived by two grandchildren.
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