Krugman earns lifetime service award

• Reprints

At 83, Beverly Krugman has her own ailments but is quick to help those in need. She has earned a service award from B'nail Tikvah. | Photo by Michael Sean Comerford - for Sun-Times Media

Updated: October 31, 2011 1:32PM

After a van rear-ended the car she was in, Beverly Krugman had to be cut out of the back passenger seat and was in intensive care for two weeks.

It was then, more than 16 years ago, she says, she made a clear, snap decision.

“I decided that I would make my life meaningful to me,” said the 83-year-old Buffalo Grove woman. “I’d help shut-ins and any other people who need me.”

A diminutive woman with her own health problems, Krugman kept to that decision and last weekend was awarded the Kavod Award by B’nai Tikvah, a conservative Jewish congregation in Deerfield. The award recognized her life of service to individuals in need, 

She is the first recipient of such an award at B’nai Tikvah.

“Her attitude toward everything ... that is the epitome of what we are all about,” said Sherrie Weiss, co-chairperson of the temple’s Cholim (Hebrew for “taking care of the sick”) Committee.

B’nai Tikvah held a celebration for Krugman at Sabbath services Saturday; and Weiss said it inspired four members to come forward and join the Cholim Committee, the local committee of the Jewish Healing Network of Chicago. The Healing Network asked various congregations in the Chicago area to nominate their own winners.

Co-chairs Weiss and Sheri Hokin said Krugman’s giving inspires them and others to do the same.

“She’s at the top of the list,” Hokin said. “We can all strive to have an attitude like Beverly and be like Beverly. She is such a good example.”

No specific acts of kindness are being cited, rather a life’s work filled with bringing people to the doctor, bringing food to the elderly, bringing Sabbath baskets to the sick and even acting as a “para-chaplain” providing Jewish services on Saturdays at Belmont Village, a senior assisted living center in Buffalo Grove.

For her part, Krugman heard the accolades Saturday and felt overwhelmed.

“I was ecstatic,” Krugman said. “I didn’t feel that it was me doing these things, from the bottom of my heart.”

The recognition is important if it inspires others, she said, but that is just who she is.

“I didn’t do it for the awards,” she said. “Every day I’m going to live my life to the fullest and this is part of it.”

Weiss and Hokin say there are 15-20 people on their committee and when someone in the congregation is in need an e-mail goes out sounding the horn.

“(Beverly) is always the first to reply,” Hokin said. “She always finds time and energy to do it, to do as much as she can.”

In need of an assistant for her own frailties, Krugman has been known to go out on charitable calls while being driven by her medical assistant, according to Hokin.

A mother of three, a grandmother of five, she was a paralegal before retiring and fills many of her days with her hi-tech interests, including her iPad and computer. She’s also a member of the Highland Park TV Producers and produces cable access TV shows.

Her Buffalo Grove home is filled with memorabilia of friends and family and times past. Hebrew sayings, religious needlepoint and Sabbath candles adorn her living room along with her daughter’s artwork and other family items.

Yet the most beautiful adornment of all is this diminutive, giving woman whose acts of charity are too many to number.

“It’s what I think everyone should do,” she said, then laughed.