Max Gross

Max Sidney Gross passed away February 21, 2020, at Pennswood Village in Newtown, PA, where he lived since 2005.  He was 91.

Max was born in Trenton, NJ, in 1928, the only child of Hildred and Irving Gross.  Following his high school graduation at 17, Max was employed by his family’s hat business, Reed Millinery, traveling continually throughout the southern United States into his 20’s.  He often talked of his loneliness being far from his family, though relished all he learned about southern culture. In the late 1950s, he became a stockbroker—his life’s dream, joining Bache & Co., where his keen acumen for finance and well-known sense of ethics and integrity earned him ever-increasing managerial responsibility. Ultimately, he rose to the level of First Vice President, overseeing more than 500 branch locations in the U.S.; he was periodically quoted in The Wall Street Journal, and at times had seats on the Midwest and Canadian stock exchanges. During the many market ups and downs, he was known for telling his investors, “Stop watching it, you’ll drive yourself nuts! Over time it will go up.”  And of course, it did.  Max worked in his chosen career well into his 70s, and even then, it was hard to step away.  As he said, “How much golf can a person play!?”

Max married Cora Lee Kaufmann in 1955 and had four children – Caren, James, Gary, and Steven.  During their 25 years together, the family moved several times as his career developed, living in the Washington, DC area and Ewing Township, with Max working in New York City a portion of the 1970s. His hard work enabled much-anticipated annual family trips to Rehoboth Beach, where, to his chagrin, he spent innumerable hours patching canvas rafts, tying chicken necks onto metal hooks to take his kids crabbing, and sneaking into town to make calls to the office to make sure all was going well in his absence.

Max was a member of the Board of Managers of the Washington Hebrew Congregation, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, the Metropolitan Board of Trade, and served on other committees throughout the years, though, as a model of humility, he was never one to highlight all he was doing. At 51 years of age, Max married his new love, Josephine (Jo) Tuemmler; together they shared more than 40 years of happiness and adventures side-by-side, including extensive travel to all seven continents, attending Broadway shows, enjoying great food, and golfing.  Max welcomed Jo’s children – Jan, Sue, and Dave – as his own.  His career-long hobby of amassing a wide and varied collection of bulls (a symbol of an advancing stock market) —was challenged later by a growing collection of college and university mugs acquired as he and Jo attended an ever-growing number of graduations. Having never gone to college himself, those mugs and the accomplishments of his children were his greatest source of pride.

Max always believed in helping others and was a very loyal person, influenced by his father being legally blind for much of his adult life.  Max joined the Bucks County Youth Aid Panel, volunteered with SCORE for many years, participated on Pennswood’s Finance Committee, and frequently gave seminars on financial planning for those who otherwise would not have access to such information.   Max is survived by his beloved seven children, ten grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Funeral services are Sunday, February 23, at 11 a.m. at Orland’s Ewing Memorial Chapel, 1534 Pennington Road, Ewing Township.

Burial will be private at Ewing Cemetery.

Donations in Max’s memory can be made to The Hildred E. and I. Irving Gross Fund of the Jewish Braille Institute International (www.jbilibrary.org) or the Alzheimer’s Association (www.alz.org).