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Ms. Mark has always included her family.

said, 'Great, I'll have a class, and
I'll get my family — who are all
overweight — to come.' I meant
my two sisters, my mother and
dad. 'And then I'm going to go out
and get a job,' because I needed to
go to work then," said Ms. Mark.
However, it took her a year to
lose that remaining extra 10
pounds. "In 1966, I had my first
class on Seven Mile Road and
Greenfield in the old Sholom Ale-
ichem Institute, downstairsiin the
auditorium," recalled Ms. Mark.
"I put a sign in the candy store on
Seven Mile Road and Livernois.
The chutzpah of it: I convinced the
man in a candy store to put up a
sign reading, 'Come Lose Weight
with Weight Watchers.'
"But I believed in myself ... I'd
always hated myself, I always felt
a failure, that I couldn't do any-
thing because I couldn't lose the
weight. And all of a sudden, I had
all this energy and I felt so good.
And I had all this courage and all
this self-respect, so I went to the
candy store and put the sign in.
"The first evening, 30 people
came to that first class. It was my
mother, and my father, my six
aunts and uncles, my five children
— that's where all those people
came from. And I was scared to
death.
"I thought, What am I going to
say to them? What am I going to
tell them?' I had no training. In
those days at International, they
had no training. Nobody told me
what to do. I had just been going
to classes, and now I was going to
open a class of my own. I didn't
know anything," said Ms. Mark.
"I took a deep breath, and start-
ed to pour my heart out, and tell
them all the pain that I had. Pret-
ty soon the heads were bobbing
up and down, [signifying] 'I had
the same thing. I know what
you're talking about.'
"And that second week, 60 peo-
ple came. And the third week, 100
people came. And that was the be-
ginning. And I was going to go out
and get a job in public relations,
or I wanted to do radio, or I could
be on television, and I ended up
doing all those things for my own
company."

Ms. Mark used to take her chil-
dren to school, do the books in her
house, and even train people in
her home. That was because she
believed that "a teacher can only
tell, and never teach, unless they
practice what they preach. So
every person that works for me in
the field at Weight Watchers has
had a weight problem, sat in my
classes, lost the weight, and then
came to our training.
"I've never put an ad in the pa-
per for people to help me, and yet
I have about 2,500 people that
work for me in all my areas.
. "I started in this small little
area in (northwest) Detroit, and
I soon branched out to Toledo and
Windsor and Ann Arbor," said
Ms. Mark. "I went around to all
the shopping malls and got peo-
ple working for me and it became
a business. And I learned and
grew with the business as they
grew.
"I was doing all of the public re-
lations, all the advertising. I was
doing the books, I was doing
everything, until I finally got some
money so I could afford an office."
How long was that transition
period? "About a year after I start-
ed my business, I gave my sister,
Sondra Berlin, who was confined
to a wheelchair, half of my busi-
ness. She had lost 65 pounds on
the program. When I did this, I
went to Sholom Aleichem and
asked if I could have an office.
They gave me one little office
there — it was my first office.
"I hired a third person to work
for us as a secretary. If one of us
had to go to the bathroom, all
three of us had to leave. The of-
fice was so small, we all had to get
up and walk out in order for one
of us to get out of the office," said
Ms. Mark.
Ms. Berlin, who became one of
Michigan's leading activists for
people with disabilities and
served as chairperson of the
Michigan Civil Rights Commis-
sion, died April 9. She was 59.
The growing company took of-
fice space on Seven Mile Road and
the Lodge Freeway. It is now a
parking lot, having been bought
by a bank.

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