Transcribed by Christine D’Emidio
Ninety-five-old Irma Schlow Zipser is not only one of the oldest residents in Centre County, she also is a 56-year breast-cancer survivor. She happily resides at Juniper Village at Brookline in State College. The daughter of Charles and Bella Schlow, she is a 1938 State High graduate and graduated with a degree in speech from the University of Michigan in 1943.
Her family came to Bellefonte in 1919 and over the years owned two stores in State College — Schlow Quality Shop, a woman’s clothing store, and Schlow’s Furniture. Zipser worked most of her life at the clothing store.
Her father, Charles Schlow, is the founder of the library that now bears his name — Schlow Centre Region Library. The library was born at a time of loss for Schlow with the passing of his wife, Bella, who died in 1957, two years after having a mastectomy because of her having breast cancer. Schlow offered two rent-free rooms in a house on West College Avenue to start the library. The library grew and moved into a converted post office in the 1960s. It underwent expansions in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2005, the library found its new home in a new facility on South Allen Street.
Zipser was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1959 and had her first mastectomy at the same hospital with the same doctor who treated her mother. Ten years later, she had her second mastectomy. Her husband, Harold, was a podiatrist who practiced until 1945 when he went into business with the Schlow family clothing store. He also managed a few apartment buildings in State College. He passed away in 2001.
Zipser has two daughters, Ruth Zipser and Judy Lang. Judy had uterine cancer in 1989, and each daughter gets a yearly checkup for cancer.
Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith sat down with Zipser at Juniper Village at Brookline to discuss her family, breast cancer, and what keeps her going at her age.
Mimi: Well, Irma, you’re a very important person in my life. I’ve known you since I was a freshman at Penn State. We met 65 years ago. I came here as a 17 year old on August 28, 1950, and I never found my way out of town. I’m real happy here, and I bet you’re real happy that you never found your way out of town, too.
Irma: Definitely.
Mimi: Where were you born?
Irma: On Howard Street in Bellefonte.
Mimi: At home?
Irma: Yeah, at home! I always felt it was a place they’d make a big to-do about, that this is where I was born and all, but it’s a funeral parlor now.
Mimi: Breast cancer is something you and I have in common. Your mother had a mastectomy in 1955 — it must’ve been really scary then. Do you remember anything about it?
Irma: It was scary.
Mimi: Was the cancer the cause of her death?
Irma: Yes, but by that time it had spread through her body, and they didn’t know as much then.
Mimi: Four years after her breast cancer, you had breast cancer.
Irma: Yes. I’ll never forget. I had one breast removed, and, about two years later, I went in every six months to my surgeon for a checkup, and he was examining me, and I had X-rays earlier in the day, and the people said, “Everything’s fine.” The surgeon was examining my breast and he turned to Harold and said, “Didn’t you ever feel that lump?”
Mimi: That was 10 years after your first mastectomy? You have survived the first mastectomy for 56 years! … The remarkable part of this is you have survived this amount of time in a wonderful life. What do you think is your secret to that happening?
Irma: Well, number one, we had the business, so as soon as I could go back to work, I did.
Mimi: And it kept you busy. I frequently say, “My work was my therapy in my toughest hours.”
Irma: I really think it was, yeah.
Mimi: You inspire the rest of us. I guess what inspires me about you is you have a good sense of humor like your father did, and you just keep moving on.
Irma: What else is there to do? You might as well move on.
Mimi: By the time people are reading this, you will be 95 years old. What does that feel like?
Irma: I don’t even feel like an old lady. I’m also counting — in four or five years I’ll have a big party.
Mimi: You’re gonna live to be 100?
Irma: I’m going to live to be 100!
Mimi: You better invite me, or I’m going to be upset.
Irma: You’re invited. You’re invited right now!
Mimi: How does it feel to have lost so many of your good friends?
Irma: It’s difficult because I had a couple girls, and we used to talk every day on the phone, and I miss that. But hey, life goes on and you have to exist.
Mimi: You’re in an assisted-living place, and you’re comfortable.
Irma: Very comfortable. It’s a very good place. The girls that work there come in two, three times a day to say, “Do you need anything? Do you want anything? Can we get you this? Can we get you that?”
Mimi: So in fact you’re in an environment where you have a larger family than you started with.
Irma: Very much so, yes, but I get up in the morning, I get dressed, I go get coffee, I look at the paper.
Mimi: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren.
Irma: Well my grandchildren, I don’t see very often. And the little ones, the great-grandchildren, are too young to know one word or the other.
Mimi: I was here when you were all here one day, and it was fun to observe you as a family, really.
Irma: Yes, but the kids, they’re good little ones.
Mimi: In my day, the Schlow family was a very prominent family in Happy Valley, and Harold Zipser was a remarkable leader in the community. Now when you were first married, he practiced podiatry.
Irma: He was in the service for a while — Mother and Dad convinced him that he should go into the business rather than go back into his practice. That way he would have an income for the future, and if he wanted to take a vacation, he didn’t have to worry — the business would still go on. So that’s the main reason that he went into the business.
Mimi: Did your parents build the building where the store was?
Irma: Yes, they built that. Dad built that building, and he also then built a couple apartment houses in town.
Mimi: He had the vision early on of where the money was: student housing.
Irma: Yes, he was a smart guy.
Mimi: He majored in business at Wharton. There were three stores at one point: Bellefonte, State College, and then Lewisburg.
Irma: Bucknell University in Lewisburg.
Mimi: And the State College store, which is now just called Irving’s, which opened in 1927. And it continues to be a lovely retail store in the main part of town, and it has apartments above it. … They’ll always be rented because students want to be downtown. But it’s a pretty decent business, and a father and grandfather who had the vision to do that in an era that no one would have predicted what would happen to the original high school. And it was still a pretty young place when your mother got the idea to buy a clothing store.
Irma: Oh yes, absolutely. When Harold and I were first married in 1943, we lived in one of the apartments on College Avenue. I can remember that Dad charged us rent the whole time that we lived there. When we decided that we wanted to move to a house, Harold was telling Dad he was going to go to the bank to see about taking out some money. You know, taking out a loan and paying it back. Dad said, “Don’t worry about it.” He said, “The whole time that I’ve been charging you rent, I have put in a savings account for you for this occasion.” He had been saving all the money that we had been paying the rent for when we wanted to buy a house.
Mimi: And you lived in a house on Prospect Avenue. How many years did you live in that house?
Irma: I moved out of there in 1991, and I must have moved there in about the 1950s.
Mimi: What is your greatest wish for the rest of your life?
Irma: You know what, Mimi, I don’t have a greater wish. If I could live like I’m living right now, I don’t want any more.
Mimi: Well, I’m going to interview you again on your 100th birthday, so you can mark it down!
Irma: No, you mark it down! We’re going to have a party. Will you come?
Mimi: I’ll come.
Irma: Well, you’re on the top of the list because we haven’t made a list yet.
Mimi: Well, God bless you with good health for the rest of the journey, and thank you for taking the time to share.
