The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 45

The Cincinnati Enquirer TEMPO Sunday, March 26, 1995 D3 Rosenthals: Lifelong art, soul mates ST Rosenthal biographies LOIS REIS ROSENTHAL Occupation: Editor, Story magazine. Born: May 18, 1939, Cincinnati. Education: Graduated Walnut Hills High School, 1957. Bachelor's in economics and pre-law, University of Cincinnati, 1960. Author of: The Chef Gregory Cookbook; Living Better in Cincinnati; Living Even Better in Cincinnati; RICHARD HENRY ROSENTHAL Occupation: President and CEO, Publications.

Born: Feb. 12, 1933, Cincinnati. Current Home: Hyde Park. Marital status: Married Lois Reis, Dec. 20, 1959.

Children: Jennie Berliant, 31, of Hyde Park, and David Rosenthal, 29, of Prospect Hill. Granddaughter Elizabeth Helen Berliant, 2 in June. Jennie is expecting again in July. Education: Graduated Hughes High School, 1951. Bachelor's in advertising, Ohio State University, 1957.

Most proud of: "Professionally, the successful growth of the company, and what that has meant to the community. Person- Living Better (national edition); Partnering; How to Stop Snoring; Living Better in Cincinnati (Cincinnati's bicentennial edition). Pets: German shepherd Gil-da Radner, cat Jackson Browne. Pet peeve: "When you meet someone who's kind of polite and nice and boring, don't your eyes glaze over?" Always wears: Crystals. "I never get on an airplane without turquoise, because it keeps away Lois fill i Jam I lit Richard ally, our kids, who I think are great people." Biggest regret: "Daydreaming my time away at school rather than being serious about it." I'm reading: "I wish I were.

What I read when I get home, and am delighted to read, is stories Lois wants me to take a look at." Summer retreat: A Maine beach house for the last 22 years. It's wired to civilization with a phone and fax machine. Fun fact: Named a Sweetheart Boss by Cincinnati Magazine. Knows by name "90-plus percent" of his 250 employees, he says. Exercise: Walking and tennis.

evil. Litmus-test issues: "I don't think Dick or I would support any activity that was not pro-women's issues and was not pro-choice." Most proud of: Professionally, 1992's National Magazine Award for fiction. Personally, "My children, because they are people I like and people I respect." Biggest regrets: (Tie) "That I didn't spend more time with the people I cared about (before they) died." Also, "I wish I could maintain more calm in my life." I'm reading: "I just finished Anna Quindlen's One True Thing. It's one of the most wonderful novels I've read. I started Pete Dexter's The Paperboy, and I like that." Exercise: Walking and hiking.

liiiiMi "The savings are yours II because the factory is ours." LFnCT OlIiFfT Installation; in home wvfo I consulting; valances. nm ill 70 Off mfg. listl UMIJII I II II II We beat written estimatesl -kjgn Jl I I I ill They're one. They're a team." Oh, they're different enough. Dick is a dry wit known for progressive, family-style management.

He unpretentiously remarks "golly," and maintains, give a few pounds, his competitive-swimmer build from high school. Should the need arise if Hollywood's depleted idea bank goes bust his resemblance to Adlai Stevenson makes him first choice for the role. Physically slight, but the life force of any space, Lois is passion ate about her enthusiasms and her unenthusiasms. "When you live in peaks and valleys, it hard it exhaust ing," she says. But, "I don't suffer CONTINUED FROM PAGE Dl Association of Cincinnati to underwriting an educational video for FreeStoreFoodBank.

Then there's community activism. The longtime defenders of civil liberties are past or present members of such boards as Planned Parenthood, FreeStoreFoodBank, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden Lois was appointed by ex-mayor and TV gabfly Jerry Springer and the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts. That doesn't count spontaneously joining a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest, which Lois did several years ago. The philanthropy operates through the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation, started almost a decade ago after Dick sold his interest in S. Rosenthal Printing, a local institution since 1868.

"We had always been active in the community up until then," Lois says. "This was a chance to really formalize the giving and to do it in a more major way." The giving is a sticky point. Neither the Rosenthals nor the many recipients of their generosity discuss money. But considering the publishing business (it's private, so profits and losses aren't available), a house reportedly worth $1 million and an art collection worth at least that much, $1 million a year in giving seems a fair estimate, say arts-community observers. "Yes, there's a feeling of wanting to give back to the community," Dick says.

"But there's also an even stronger feeling of wanting to improve the community altruistically but also selfishly. We live here. We're going to continue to live here. We want it to be a better place than it is to live." Hearing perfection The Rosenthals give back because they were reared that way. Dick, 62, recalls making rounds with mother Helen, now 90, when she volunteered at old Drake Memorial Hospital.

A pianist, Helen also aided Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and taught immigrants to read. After rearing six children, she returned to school, earned a psychology degree and became Ohio's first music therapist. "I remember hearing a Gershwin song, Rudolph Serkin was the pianist," Dick recalls. "I remember my mother saying, 'That's what you'll hear' I'm getting emotional 'when you hear and I remember that as being tremendously exciting." His late father, Wilbert, was a scoutmaster when he wasn't working at S. Rosenthal founded by Dick's great-grandfather or smoking stogies in his boxes at Crosley Field ami River Downs.

"My mother was much more outgoing, intense, very anxious to educate her children academically and culturally," Dick says. "And my father was very easygoing." Dick wasn't the most conscientious student. He drifted from college to college to the Army (where he was a lifeguard), before receiving an advertising degree at Ohio State University in 1957. He immediately went to work for founded by his grandfather, Ed, in 1913. The stands for the late Farm Quarterly and the for Writer's Digest, 74-year-old flagship magazine.

Dick was named editor in 1959 when, at 26, he married Lois. 'Lois Moments' Lois, now 55, was 20 at the time, and six months from graduating from UC, having studied economics and pre-law. Her maternal grandparents were Polish immigrants from Gali-cia. George and wife Jennie whom the Rosenthals' daughter is named after met in Philadelphia and migrated to Cincinnati, where they opened Bilker's. It was, Lois says, the city's first delicatessen.

"My grandparents were a wonderful American success story because they did very well," Lois says, "and I was brought up well. But it always came from work. We all worked at the store. I remember learning to count, sitting next to my grandfather on a wooden fools lightly. Adds Birckhead, "Lois doesn't have her red hair for nothing." But more and more, Lois looks to Dick and vice versa for help, for advice and for unwinding.

These days, they're more likely to skip social outings to walk Gilda You've Made the Decision to Stop Smoking Now there's help in dealing with the mental and physical addictions to smoking. For only the next few weeks you can take part in an important study involving a medication. Call Terry Thompson at 1-800-388-7636 to see if you qualify to participate! Weekdays 10 am to 8 pm Saturday 10 am to 4 pm Sunday 12 noon to 4 pm Radner, their German shepherd, to watch the sunset, to cook and read and relax in their bright, contem porary home. The one with the Ohio River view that tugboat skippers would swap a month's wages for. The one Dick admits is backdrop for their art collection, "I have to say, in the last couple dozen years of my life, one of my strongest influences has been my Toni Birckhead, owner of the Toni Birckhead Gallery.

"And fortunately they've been able to share their wealth with other people, to try to bring their values which they believe in very strongly and share them with other people." Yet principles carry a price. Composting. Recycling (long before it was fashionable). Forming a human chain to protect Planned Parenthood. Boycotting table grapes to support migrant farm workers.

(The late Cesar Chavez, head of the United Farm Workers of America, is a major Lois hero.) "I will put myself on the line for my family and for what I believe in," Lois says, even though sometimes "you do wind up getting hurt. But I would rather do that than do nothing. "I always call myself an old hippie in a lot of ways." Her belief in an earthy, crunchy life sparked an earlier writing career, which followed her handling of special projects for Her 1975 book Living Better in Cincinnati a hit guerrilla-shopping guide to everything from bargain stores to scrap yards led to three sequels (all printed on recycled paper), not to mention her own Enquirer column and TV and radio shows. Lois wrote what she knew, hence later books on partnering and snoring, the latter inspired by Dick's nocturnal jackhammering. Unfortunately, Dick still snores.

"Off and on," Lois allows. But the writing gave Lois until then, "the publisher's wife" her own identity. And at home, it helped mold Team Rosenthal. "We've always been a pretty close family and it was always a team effort," says Jennie Berliant, 31, the oldest of the Rosenthals' two children. "We literally unloaded Living Better in Cincinnati from the back of my father's Toyota station wagon and into the local Waldenbooks or Drew's Bookshop or wherever we could sell them." Jennie and brother David would hawk the book while riding escalators during Lois' department-store signings.

And until Lois' radio show took off, they'd phone WCKY-AM to prevent dead air. It's no surprise, then, that Jennie parlayed her sales acumen and family ties into a job as national accounts manager for book division. In July, she will celebrate 10 years with The same month, she is due to deliver the Rosenthals' second grandchild. Grown up together Before becoming parents and grandparents, the Rosenthals were best friends. Their chief asset, confidants say, is each other.

"They have grown together over the years," Birckhead says. "They work together in harmony. crate at the store, giving 2 cents back for each bottle deposit." Lois' parents married during the Depression and lived with the Bilkers. Lois and her older brother grew up in this extended family. "Grandma always said to me she was an incredibly dynamic woman 'I'm smart, but you have to be Lois recalls.

So the Lois Moments began. Music lessons. Elocution lessons. Reading at age 4. Tap-dancing in a grasshopper costume.

Mardi Gras queen. And, always, belting "Give My Regards to Broadway." "Whenever I hear it," she says, "my toes start to twitch." They twitched uncontrollably a few years ago during a company show. She led book and magazine editors in a rendition that would have silenced Ethel Merman. Spotlight on a Lois Moment. "I can't imagine life without fun," she laughs.

"And I can't imagine not expressing myself." No bad second acts Have no fear. Lifetimes steeped in culture and community have made the Rosenthals tough on the arts, themselves everyone. "Little short of excellence is unacceptable to either of us," Dick says. "We're pretty demanding, whether it's something we're seeing on the stage, or something we're reading." This includes leaving, at intermission, a play they dislike. "We've been known to do that a little too frequently," Dick admits.

But with so many "shoulds" in life, "seeing the second act of a bad play is not a should." Begins Lois, "Ed Stern said he would shoot me in the aisles "If it was a play he was directing," Dick finishes. Stern has come to expect even welcome their candor. "They're not gonna like everything we put on here and God knows I know when they don't," Stern says. "But they'll also tell you when they do like it. "You can't take them for granted.

They're always going to tell you the truth. And you can't prejudge what they're going to say." Although their honesty prevails, the Rosenthals don't attach strings to the money they give. Even if they do, no one will say so. Whether it's the New Play Prize or Next Generation Theatre Series, "they want to know (their money) is being used for this purpose. So they're good stewards of their grants," Stern says.

"We don't have lots of clauses." 'An old hippie' The Rosenthals' firm-but-fair frankness backs up their beliefs. "They have deep principles and a deep social and aesthetic consciousness," says family friend wife, he says. I like to think we've been very good for one another in the sense of at least questioning: Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing the best thing? Are we providing the best service? And that has to do with everything from being parents to being spouses. Surviving storms Has A Back Injury Left And community activists. They're no strangers to the eyes of storms.

Lois was on Planned Parentnood's board during 1985's -sr abortion-clinic torchings. And Dick i was on Contemporary Arts Center's board during 1990's Mapple-thorpe firestorm. In fact, their first date was at West End's Community Church, to hear the Rev. Mau rice McCrackin, noted pacifist. You With Nothing To Work On But The Crosswords? "They're always trying to push the envelope," says son David, 29, general counsel and man ger of new business development.

They search their souls and the souls of Cincinnatians. "We don't just give money, we give money to things we care about," Lois says. "It's both of us being involved in the community, finding a need and saying, 'We'll fill or, 'We'll do and making things happen in the areas that we really feel passionate about. Besides, "I don't think we'd be as passionate about what we do, Lois adds, if it wasn fun. So expect more Lois Moments Many more.

At Deaconess Hospital, we don't think a back injury should keep you out of action any longer than necessary. That's why our Back Treatment Center offers one of the area's most comprehensive programs for the diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of back injuries. Our physicians understand why you're hurting, and what you're going through. We know you don't want to make a career out of working on crosswords. History: Book tells of the Mill Creek's decline damage to the stream, what has been done and what needs to be done to reclaim the waterway and surrounding valley.

"The history and the health of the society along its banks have always been reflected in the wa ters of the Indians Maketewah and the current residents' Mill Creek," he writes. dumped into the stream by farmers. Epidemics of cholera and malaria were thought to be caused by the Mill Creek. Worse was to come as slaughter houses, tanneries, breweries and distilleries flourished along the creek. Sewers added human waste.

In 1914, each gallon of water flowing from the Mill Creek's mouth contained, Hedeen reports, "a cup of warm swill contributed by 36 alcohol, meat and animal-by product firms." Today the situation is worse. Hazardous waste sites throughout the industrialized valley threaten to release even more deadly elements into the water. Hedeen' book is a plea for help. The author has documented the CONTINUED FROM PAGE Dl who did not welcome newcomers. Fighting Indians was an occasional necessity, but the setters' primary task was fighting the forest.

To early fanners of the Miami Valley, a tree was an enemy of progress, to be eliminated at the first opportunity. To rid a land of trees was to "redeem" it from the wasteland of nature. Cultivated land was the key to progress. Changes came quickly. By 1822, when Cincinnati was 34 years old, a British visitor noted that "all the land in the immediate neighborhood is without a tree upon it." English author Charles Dickens, visiting in 1842, described the Mill Creek basin as 'richly cultivated and luxuriant in its promise of a fruitful harvest." In 1882, the Mill Creek Valley historian Henry Teetor marveled that wilderness had been turned into Eden.

"The waste of woods, within three generations, has become a populous and powerful realm." By 1914, Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce was forced to admit "the dirty, fetid stream of today is the martyr of the onward progress of civilization." Clearing the woodland and plowing the cropland caused erosion, and sediment in the creek killed fish. Without shade trees, water temperatures increased the growth of algae. The water was further polluted by the manure For more information or an appointment with a Back Treatment Center physician, call us. 559-2255 "Cincinnati: Then and Now" appears Sundays in Tempo. Comments and suggestions are wel come.

Send them to Owen Findsen, t'i 1 co Tempo, The Enquirer, 312 Elm Cincinnati 45202; fax, 768-8330: E-mail, find- sentso.uc.pdu..