Marjorie Koster Beinfield of Darien, a former 60-year Westport resident and wife of the late well-known Westport physician Malcolm Beinfield, died March 12, 2016 at home. She was 90.
Over the years, Marge and Mal Beinfield — he was Westport’s first board-certified surgeon — were involved in numerous causes promoting equal rights and social justice.
Following the Mississippi summer of 1964 that saw students from the North organizing a voting rights campaign, the Beinfields hosted a reception after the Leonard Bernstein and Isaac Stern benefit concert for the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee (SNCC). Bruce Beinfield, a son, remembers showing Isaac Stern the Stradivarius violin that had belonged to Marge’s father that night.
The Beinfields, along with their close friend, the late Westport artist and writer Tracy Sugarman — who helped organize the benefit — had met Martin Luther King, Jr. at Temple Israel in Westport in the spring of 1964.
One of the six Westport students honored that night for having been in Mississippi that summer was Bernard Nevas, a son of Mal’s cousin, Libby Nevas, wife of well-known Westport attorney Leo Nevas.
Marge joined Women’s Strike for Peace in the early 1960s to protest nuclear arms. She organized a group for elders so together they could process their lives and losses. It continues to meet decades later.
Continuing her interest in promoting local causes, last year Marge sponsored a Westport Cinema Initiative showing of “The Dead,” the final film of legendary director John Huston based on the closing story of James Joyce’s “Dubliners.”
Marge liked to try new things. Late in life, she took up javelin throwing. She entered the Senior Olympics in May 2000, taking home a gold medal in the sport.
Born June 29, 1925 in Brooklyn, N.Y., she was the daughter of Lily Silverstone Koster and the larger-than-life surgeon Harry Koster, a founder of Crown Heights Hospital. Both Marge and Mal’s fathers graduated from the same medical school class at Long Island School of Medicine in 1914.
Marge attended a small private school, the Berkeley Institute, graduating in 1943, a week after her father died an untimely death at age 50 when he was thrown from a horse in Prospect Park. Inexplicably, the night before Marge dreamed that her father would be killed on horseback.
She enrolled in the Connecticut College for Women and while there, met Mal, then a recent Yale University graduate who was enrolled in the Long Island College of Medicine. Mal knew that she was his chosen mate but needed to convince Marge. Eventually, Mal prevailed, and the couple was married at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Dec. 16, 1945.
In 1946, the couple welcomed their first child, Harriet. In 1948, Marge’s mother died in of leukemia at age 56 and she and Mal moved into her mother’s Brooklyn apartment with three of her younger siblings. She assumed the daunting role of parenting her siblings Rose, Richard and Bobby Koster as well as managing their shared household.
A second child, Lynn, was born in 1949, and by that time the family had moved to a house on Westport’s South Compo Road. A third child, Bruce, was born in 1952, and the family moved into a larger home on Hockanum Road where they welcomed a fourth child, Lizzie, born in 1955.
By then, Mal had developed a thriving medical practice in Westport and was four years into his role of surgeon to the Staples athletic program. Every home game until 1989, he ran out to assess injuries on the football field. In 1996, Staples inducted him into its football Wall of Fame as an honorary member for his longtime services as team physician.
After the youngest of her four children acquired her driver’s license, Marge enrolled in a special counseling program at Einstein Medical College and graduated from Adelphi University with a Master’s in Social Work in 1976.
As the social worker on the psych unit at Norwalk Hospital for 15 years, she helped people transition back into their lives. She maintained a private practice for 30 years in Westport.
She is survived by her four children: Harriet of San Francisco, Lynn of Colorado Springs, Bruce of Norwalk, Elizabeth of Rowayton and adoptive son John Edoga, native of Nigeria and resident of New York; eight grandchildren: Bear Korngold, Becca Roodhuyzen, Jenny Friedman, David Roodhuyzen, Alex Beinfield, Zoe Hamann, Carolyn and Suzanne Beinfield, and Miata and Che Edoga; and brothers Richard and Robert Koster.
In addition to her parents and husband, she was predeceased by her sister, Rose Singer, and her adoptive granddaughter, Sherifa Edoga, who predeceased her by 22 years exactly, to the day.
Services will take place Friday, March 18, 2016 at 1 p.m. at Temple Israel, 14 Coleytown Road, Westport.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Open Door Shelter, 4 Merritt St., South Norwalk, CT 06854.