At her sister’s engagement party in their parents’ Forest Park home in late 1939, Blooma Mazur noticed when Philip Marcus walked in the room.
“He was awfully cute,” she recalls.
Blooma didn’t miss Philip’s attention either. “She looked awfully good to me,” he says.
Despite their mutual interest in each other, they didn’t date at first. Instead, they would hang out with their siblings, who married in June of 1940, above the family drug store. But after about a year, Philip shipped off with the U.S. Navy.
Philip wrote to Blooma regularly, and she collected about 50 letters during his 3½ years of military service during World War II. After participating in 13 invasions in the South Pacific Theater, he returned home for eye surgery in October of 1945 and was honorably discharged.
Once back at home, Philip struggled to get acclimated to civilian life again. About nine months after returning home, a family friend called Blooma, telling her that Philip still “loved her,” as he had professed in his letters from overseas. Then, the friend said the same to Philip, who called soon afterward to arrange a date.
On Columbus Day of 1946, Philip and Bloom shared their first kiss at Fort McHenry, the birthplace of our national anthem.
They were married on Jan. 5, 1947, at Beth Tfiloh Congregation, then at its previous location on Garrrison Boulevard. It was a snowy Sunday afternoon, but that didn’t deter the 200 guests from attending. Four rabbis conducted the Orthodox ceremony.
After honeymooning in Atlantic City and New York City, Philip and Blooma moved atop the family drugstore on Pratt Street. Elaine Marcia Marcus joined the family in 1948. Soon after, the family bought a house on Norfolk Avenue and welcomed Joel Howard Marcus in 1950 and Aaron Robert Marcus five years later.
The family moved again in 1963, and in 1985 Philip and Blooma bought their retirement home, a condominium in the Bartonwood community on Fallstaff Road in 1985.
The family moved again in 1963, and in 1985, Philip and Blooma bought their retirement home, a condominium in the Bartonwood community on Fallstaff Road.
Philip worked hard in the installment business to support their young family. In 1958, he joined his brother, Gilbert, in the family’s men’s and boy’s wholesale clothing business, Marcus & Marcus. Blooma worked fulltime as well, when Gilbert was ill. In 1993, they sold the business and traveled.
“As soon as we sold the business, we got in the car and went West for seven weeks,” recalls Blooma, now 93.
Over the years, Philip and Blooma have traveled to Israel four times and to England. They played poker for 50 years and volunteered for local organizations for more than two decades.
Now, they enjoy spending time with their children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, who on Jan. 22nd joined 80 others to celebrate the Marcuses’ 70th wedding anniversary celebration. Twenty years earlier, Philip and Blooma enjoyed a re-marriage ceremony for their 50th anniversary, which included a bus tour of their lives, in the same vein as the old TV show “This is Your Life.”
“We’ve had a fortunate life together,” says Blooma. “We’ve gotten along well through all of our years.”
The Marcuses still hold hands, and Philip tells Blooma he loves her all day long.
“We always did,” says Philip, 96. “Now I do for support, too.”
As they celebrate their seven decades of marriage, they thank the Almighty for allowing them to reach this wonderful milestone, and suggest honesty as the keystone for newlywed couples to succeed in marriage in the long-term.
“Know what you’re doing before you do it,” says Philip. “If you have any questions, discuss it. Don’t just argue about it. And be respectful. If you’re not respectful, it just kills it.”
Linda L. Esterson is an Owings Mills-based freelance writer.
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