Many in Pittsburgh knew the Wildberg family and their furniture store in Squirrel Hill which carried merchandise of the highest quality. "They were people of honor and integrity, with a distinct air of 'being somebody,'" a close friend once wrote. In fact, when the store failed during the Depression, the Wildbergs sold their house in Squirrel Hill and paid off every creditor.
Thanks to her family's "advanced views on the education of women," their daughter Madelon attended and graduated from Wellesley College in the 1920s and went to Paris to engage in the literary life of the times. She became a correspondent for Women's Wear Daily and later laughed about the frantic telegrams she would send to New York reporting that hemlines would be an inch shorter.
On her return to Pittsburgh, she worked for Gimbel's in the ad department. Highly efficient, she would complete her copywriting assignments quickly and spend the rest of her 40-hour week browsing the store, prompting Gimbel's president to finally fire her for refusing to sit at her office desk. She wasn't a rule follower, but she was always generous, interested in people and very funny.
Before Madelon died in 1982, she created a trust and left half her estate to The Pittsburgh Foundation for the field of educational television. Her fund continues to support educational television programming today.
Type of Fund
- Field of Interest