Allan Dameshek, whose service to the community grew from love, has passed away
When Allan Dameshek resigned from York City Council in 1974, one of the local newspapers ran an editorial headlined, “The Dum-Dum Who Cared Too Much.”
The gist of the editorial was that he was stretched too thin. Between running his business, Newswanger’s Shoe Store on Continental Square, and establishing the city’s Human Relations Commission, and working with the Codorus Creek Redevelopment Authority, and the various other projects he was involved in, his problem was that he cared too much, that no matter what the project, that it was too much work for one man. “It ate him up,” his daughter Margie Rosenberg said.
That was Allan Dameshek.
He loved life and he loved people, and he loved his community and his temple. He had, in the words of one of his oldest friends, Lou Lavetan, “the heart of a mensch.”
“He just loved everybody,” said Lavetan, who first met Dameshek when he was a kid and Dameshek fitted him for a pair of new shoes at Newswanger’s. “He wanted everybody to be happy. He wanted everybody to be at peace.”
Margie said, “That was just his heart and soul. He was very accepting of everybody. He wanted to take care of everybody. He wanted people to be happy, and he wanted to make sure people were comfortable.”
He was a native of Baltimore – his father, Samuel, was in the shoe business in the city – and in 1957, after serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to York, running Newswanger’s.
He loved his adopted town. He was a fixture downtown, a frequent patron of Central Market. He became deeply involved in the community, serving on the boards of a number of business and charitable organizations.
In 1977, after Newswanger’s fell victim to the decline of downtown retail businesses, he signed on as the executive director of the York Jewish Community Center, shepherding the move from its downtown facility to the sprawling new complex on Hollywood Drive in Spring Garden Township. He also expanded the center’s mission, creating Jewish Family Services, a resettlement program for Russian immigrants and an interfaith dialogue group. To get an idea of his sense of humor, he joked some years back, “The shoe business closed so I went into the Jew business."
The Four Chaplains Prayer Breakfast grew from that last project, honoring the service of the chaplains – a rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Methodist minister and an evangelical preacher – who sacrificed their lives while rescuing sailors and civilians aboard the USS Dorchester, a troop transport sunk by a German torpedo in the North Atlantic on Feb. 3, 1943. For Dameshek, it was an opportunity to show that people of different faiths could come together and work for the common good.
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His passion for the community came from deep within, an extension of his passion for his family. “He was fiercely dedicated to his wife Nancy, whom he had been married to for more than 52 years, and his family. But he never stopped worrying about the rest of the world.”
He loved a good joke and dessert. “I don’t think he ever met a piece of pie he didn’t like,” Margie said. “He always said, ‘Life is short. Eat dessert first.’”
Prior to the pandemic, his daughters said, he could be found at the Round the Clock Diner, sitting at the counter and talking to everybody.
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Lavetan, who considers Dameshek a mentor, said, “He was the nicest person you’d ever want to meet.” He greeted everybody with a hug and his favorite expression was, Lavetan said, “Love you, everything.”
While he was in nursing care, his daughters said, he always told everybody that he loved them, from the nurses who cared for him daily to the person who drew his blood for tests. His last words, on March 23, were, “I love you, everybody.”
He was 89 when he died, four days short of his 90th birthday.
Dameshek’s funeral service will be at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 28, at Temple Beth Israel, 2090 Hollywood Drive. For those unable to attend, the service will be on Zoom. (Meeting ID: 314 775 798. Passcode “Hollywood.)
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Allan Dameshek, former director of the York JCC, has passed away
