Brandeis Magazine

Ellen Gordon, the 86-year-old CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries, was featured in May in a Boston Globe story about a Cambridge, Massachusetts, candy factory owned by her company, which is headquartered in Chicago. The Cambridge factory makes 26,500,000 pieces of candy a day and is the world’s sole producer of Junior Mints, Sugar Babies and Charleston Chews. When Ellen’s husband, Melvin, died at age 95 three years ago, Ellen became the Tootsie Roll Industries head. Albert Shar and his wife, Cynthia, have both retired, Cynthia closing her psychology practice and Albert closing his consultancy, QERT. Albert reports they are happily splitting their time between Philadelphia and Boca Raton, Florida, enjoying their children and grandchildren, and playing golf. Richard Weisberg, who teaches at the Cardozo Law School, works in behalf of victims of Vichy France. In July, he met in Paris with the French administrators of the restitution commission there, which has restored several hundred millions of euros for material assets stolen from Jews during WWII. Richard will teach courses at both the UCLA School of Law and Cardozo on U.S.-based lawsuits involving Holocaust assets.