Bea Firestone Flam Obituary (2008) - Mission Hills, Kansas

Bea Firestone Flam, a former associate editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, who was long active in the local Jewish community, died Friday at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She was 76 and lived in Mission Hills, Ks. The cause was respiratory failure, said her son, David Firestone. In 1963, Mrs. Flam’s first husband, Milton Firestone, took control of the Jewish Chronicle, then a struggling weekly serving the region’s growing Jewish population. Over the next two decades, until Mr. Firestone’s death in 1983, the couple turned around the newspaper’s fortunes, covering the community aggressively and advocating for stronger Jewish institutions, particularly in the area of education. They occasionally provoked controversy by editorially criticizing the priorities of some of those institutions, from synagogues to large community organizations, and writing about issues of assimilation and observance of Jewish holidays in the public schools. But as the paper’s circulation grew through the 1960s and ‘70s, so did its influence. Neither Bea nor Milton Firestone had any journalistic training, but quickly grew into their roles. As associate editor, Mrs. Flam wrote regular reviews of Jewish books, community features, and contributed many of the items and social notes in the popular “Listening Post” column. She also created a column of her own called the “Bee-Line for Women,” under the thinly disguised Yiddish pseudonym of Bee Fraylich, in which she wrote humorously of life as a Jewish mother and editor. The Firestones were active members of the American Jewish Press Association, and frequently joined their colleagues from around the country on reporting trips to Israel, including one just before the Six-Day War in 1967. They regularly interviewed top Israeli officials, as well as prominent Israelis and other Jewish leaders who passed through Kansas City. In 1966, amid growing community dissatisfaction with the quality of Jewish education in Kansas City, the Firestones became one of the founding families of the Hebrew Academy of Greater Kansas City, later to become the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, the city’s only Jewish day school. In addition to sending two of their three children to the fledgling school, which initially met in rented synagogue classrooms, the Firestones used the influence of the Chronicle’s editorial and news pages to boost community support for the school, which eventually became one of the community’s most successful institutions. After Mr. Firestone died of a heart attack at age 55, his widow continued his work at the Chronicle, but sold her interest in the paper to Sun Publications and left journalism in 1988. Mrs. Flam was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1932, the only daughter of Milan Blumenthal, a kosher butcher, and Clementine Hertz. With the assistance of a great aunt living in northwest Missouri, the family fled Germany in 1937, just before the doors were finally closed, and settled in Maysville, Mo., where they took up the unfamiliar profession of farming. “The farmers we lived by when we first arrived were very nice to us and did help,” Mrs. Flam wrote in a family history in 2005. “We knew nothing about farming, and they did walk over once in a while to offer advice. The children in the one-room schoolhouse were also nice to me.” The Blumenthal family, eventually joined by other family members from Germany, later moved to St. Joseph and then to Kansas City in 1949. Mr. Blumenthal worked for many years as a kosher butcher in Kansas City, and was also the owner of the Far-Best Chili Co. Bea Blumenthal graduated from Paseo High School in 1950 and also attended Kansas City University, later to become UMKC. In 1954, she married Mr. Firestone, then an office manager for a window-glass company, in a ceremony at Beth Shalom Synagogue, then located at 34th Street and The Paseo. The couple were long active members of the synagogue. In 1988, she married D.J. Wasserstrom, the executive director of Vocational Services Inc. of Clay and Platte Counties, later moving with him from Kansas City to Leawood. The two were regular patrons of the city’s cultural institutions, and traveled widely. She worked during that period at the law offices of Long & Giffen in Johnson County. Mr. Wasserstrom died in 2002. Five years later, she married Paul Flam, a retired civilian member of Air Force and tour leader, and joined him at his home in Mission Hills. The two traveled widely throughout the world and the country, making frequent trips to Israel, where two of her children and nine of her grandchildren live. Mrs. Flam was a member of the Beth Shalom Sisterhood, Congregation Ohev Shalom, Hadassah, Jewish Women International, the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy Auxiliary, and the Jewish Community Center. She is survived by Mr. Flam, of the home; her son David Firestone of Brooklyn, N.Y., deputy national editor of The New York Times, and his wife Susan Brenna; her son Michael Even-Esh, an educator and tour guide living in Moshav Nov, Israel, and his wife Tzurit; her daughter Judith Singer, a business executive living in Kibbutz Merav, Israel, and her husband Hanan; and eleven grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at Louis Memorial Chapel on Sunday, Oct. 19, at 10:30 a.m.; burial in Mt. Carmel Cemetery. The family requests no flowers and suggests contributions to the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy or Congregation Beth Shalom.