Ron Silver On The LES

Below: He attended ESHI, the East Side Hebrew Institute on Avenue B and 8th Street

Below: His mother, May Zimelman, lived here in 1930. It's now part of the Village View Houses site. In the census she was listed as Mae Zimlman

About the former ESHI, from ephemeral ny
This Victorian Gothic/Queen Anne building is the third lodging house the Society opened, called the Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School. Constructed on Avenue B and 8th Street in 1886, it housed 71 boys, according to the 1870 census, most between 12 and 15. The architect, Calvert Vaux, also designed Central Park. Vaux was committed to helping the poor and designed all of the Children’s Aid Society homes. Over the years, about 170,000 street kids passed through all the different lodging houses. The Avenue B building didn’t house kids for long though. By 1910 it became a school only, and in 1925 was sold to a Jewish congregation. Vacant in the 1970s, it was turned into apartments in 1977, then landmarked in 2000.

New York City Pleasures And Treasures: Narrated by Ron Silver

Although his political views, to me, were baffling I was sad to hear that this son of the LES passed away. from Roy

We lost a fellow pegleg - "Ron Silver".
He was a year behind me, but I did have lunches with him at times.
Makes me remember I'm getting older and am mortal.

Ron Silver, a long time smoker, died on March 15, 2009 in New York City after a two-year battle with esophageal cancer. Silver was born in New York City, New York, the son of May (née Zimelman), a substitute teacher, and Irving Roy Silver, a clothing sales executive. Silver was raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended The East Side Hebrew Institute ("ESHI") and then Stuyvesant High School. He went on to graduate from the SUNY at Buffalo with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Chinese, and received a Master's Degree in Chinese History from St. John's University in New York and the College of Chinese Culture in Taiwan. He also attended Columbia University's Graduate School of International Affairs.
Silver traveled to more than 30 countries and spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. He taught at the high school level and was a social worker for the Department of Social Services.