Obituary: Morris Rubenstein
Founder of Ruby’s Cleaners in
Pittsburgh
Morris Rubenstein, who founded
Ruby’s Cleaners in Pittsburgh, PA, died at age 90 on July
8. He had lived in Florida for the past 20 years. The son of a
Russian immigrant who made and repaired shoes, he was
responsible for bringing bags of shoes to his father as a
teenager. When he was 17, in 1930, he saw an opportunity and
began to haul shopping bags of customers’ dirty clothing
along with the shoes and delivered the clothes to drycleaning
shops. By 1932 he had opened his own drycleaning store in Mt.
Olive and followed that with a second store in Mt. Lebanon. The
first Ruby’s Cleaners plant was opened in 1937.
Interested in constantly expanding his business,. Mr.
Rubenstein visited cleaners in Cleveland where he learned about
new machinery and faster cleaning solutions. By 1958, the
business had expanded to 24 locations.
His son, Gerald, began working in the
business sorting coat hangers at age 4. Gerald later took over
the business from his father but the family no longer owns any
of the three remaining Ruby’s Cleaners stores.
“He often said he was so lucky - his
life spanned the whole 20th century,” his daughter,
Judith Rubenstein told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “He
was born when the czars still ruled Russia. But he was lucky
enough to be here for the first radio broadcast in 1919. He got
one of the first refrigerators in Pittsburgh. He got to see the
Model T Fords.”
In his younger years. Mr. Rubenstein made
a name for himself as an athlete. After graduating from high
school in 1928 at age 14, he received scholarship offers to
play basketball at schools in New York and Florida, but chose
to stay in home and the University of Pittsburgh, where he
alternated semesters working and attending school, saving up
enough money to pay the $150 tuition. He played on Pitt’s
championship basketball teams of the early 1930s, one of the
few Jewish athletes to do so.
In 1950, he helped found Temple Emanuel
where he frequently sang for High Holiday services. Blind in
the later years of his life, he turned to singing as a
past-time and was known as “The Singer” in the
nursing home where he lived.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter,
Mr. Rubenstein is survived by seven grandchildren, 11
great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
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