Ethel Bernice Feigon

Biography of Ethel Stern Feigon

Ethel Stern was born and raised in Chicago, the daughter of Max and Gabriella Stern. She attended the University of Southern California and Northwestern University. After graduating from Northwestern with a bachelor’s degree in education, she bought a Model A Ford and headed out to the prairies. She taught in a small rural school in western Iowa for several years, living in a house with no running water or toilet facilities and with a wood stove for heat. In the late 1930s, she returned to Chicago and became a job counselor. While taking graduate courses at Northwestern, she met her future husband, Gershon J. Feigon. They married on December 14, 1941. The newlyweds spent most of the war years in Tampa, Florida, where Ethel was the only lay teacher in a Catholic high school.

At the end of the war the couple returned to Chicago with their infant son, Lee, and Mrs. Feigon helped her husband begin the import-export business that became Central Seaway Company. In 1953 the family, which now included daughters Judy and Sharon, moved to Highland Park. Although Mrs. Feigon was hospitalized for several months in the mid-1950s after being stricken with polio, she made an impressive recovery and quickly returned to caring for her family. It was in Highland Park that Mrs. Feigon became active in ORT, serving for several terms as president of the Ravinia chapter of ORT and in various other functions at the district and local level.

In the late 1960s, she returned to school, earning a master’s degree in psychology from Roosevelt University. She worked in the suburban school districts as a school psychologist for several years. After Gershon Feigon died in 1973, Ethel became the president of Central Seaway. Under her stewardship the company’s revenues grew more than tenfold.

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Jul 21 2021, 8:31:38 UTC