Mike Grossman, Former Head Of Family Lumber Store, 83

[DGH]

.

Mike Grossman, who had homes in Woodstock, Massachusetts, and
Brookline, Massachusetts, who may not have raced down the slopes that
quickly, but few could keep up with the pace at which he lived his
life, and who eschewed his given name, Maurice, and was always known as
Mike, died Wednesday, December 14, 2005, at the age of 83.

When an oncologist delivered a pancreatic cancer diagnosis a little
more than a month ago, Mike Grossman's first question was: Will I ski
this winter?

The response was hardly unusual, said Ellen Kaplan Sulkin, Mr.
Grossman's companion of 21 years. A few years ago, she said, doctors
told Mr. Grossman he wouldn't be able to ski between open heart surgery
at Thanksgiving and a February operation to remove a cancerous kidney.
Undeterred, he sewed an "80+" patch onto his jacket after his 80th
birthday, then traveled with a son to a ski area in Woodstock, Vermont,
to get in a few runs before the kidney surgery. Some young skiers asked
what the patch stood for, and he replied, "That's how fast I ski."

"There were no boundaries for him," Sulkin said yesterday.

Grandson of the founder of Grossman's Lumber, Mr. Grossman helped
revive the fortunes of the family company in the late 1980s before
retiring in 1990 as chairman and chief executive officer.

In 1969, Evans Products Co. purchased the chain of Grossman's Lumber
stores, which evolved from the business started in the late-1800s by
Louis Grossman, a Russian immigrant. Mr. Grossman left the company as
president in 1984, at age 64. Evans Products went into bankruptcy; Mr.
Grossman returned in 1986 as the financially successful Grossman's
chain reemerged as an independent company.

"I'm going to try very hard ... to make it a bigger and better company
than ever," he said in a Globe interview at the time.

Before he retired in 1990, the company had sales of more than $1
billion.

The Grossman's chain was long-dominated by the descendants of Louis
Grossman. Mr. Grossman readily acknowledged that the family connection
certainly helped as he worked his way up from low-level sales jobs.

"He always said, 'It's easier to go up the ladder if your father owns
the ladder,'" Sulkin said. "He had some very pithy sayings."

For all of his success, Sulkin said, Mr. Grossman never lost his
compassion for and curiosity about people. "I always said he could find
out more about people in a ski line than a psychiatrist could find out
in five years of therapy." she said.

Sulkin recounted an anecdote, told to her by a congregant at
Congregation Shir Shalom in Woodstock, about how a man who looked
homeless and unkempt wandered into the temple one day. Mr. Grossman
immediately took a prayer book and walked over to sit and talk with
him, to extend a welcome.

Mr. Grossman's endless curiosity about strangers was captured in a
framed family picture of him greeting a group of Buddhist monks who
were standing on the steps of a chapel on the Stanford University
campus. The border under the photo bears his trademark
conversation-starter: ''Where are you folks from?"

Mr. Grossman was inducted in 1987 into the Home Center Hall of Fame,
which was created by the Home Center Leadership Council. He served on
the boards of several other businesses, formerly was president of the
National Supply Organization, and received the Silver Jubilee Prime
Minister's Award from Israel in 1972.

He also was very involved in Jewish charities. Mr. Grossman helped
found Congregation Shir Shalom, served as a director of Temple Emeth in
Brookline, and founded the Marilyn Grossman Caring Community at Temple
Israel, Boston in honor of his late wife. He was married to Marilyn
Silverston in 1944; she died in 1982.

Mr. Grossman was on the board of overseers at Hebrew Union College and
the board of trustees of Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

Sulkin, a Weston resident, said he had a deep love of his family and
his faith. Though Mr. Grossman had opposed the sale of the family
business to Evans Products, he went along with the decision rather than
risk opening a schism among the relatives who ran Grossman's Lumber.

The highest compliment he paid friends was to call them a mensch. "It's
a Yiddish expression, and that was so close to him," Sulkin said. ''He
was brought up with Yiddish in his home."

In addition to Sulkin, Mr. Grossman leaves three daughters, JoAnne
Pearlman of Mercer Island, Washington, Nancy of Underhill, Vt., and Joy
of South Woodstock, Vermont; two sons, Robert of West Hartford,
Connecticut, and James of South Woodstock, Massachusetts; three
sisters, Anne Starr of Boston, Massachusetts, Penny Soble of West Palm
Beach, Flloridaa, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Shirley Brown of
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; and 10 grandchildren.

Boston Globe