22 | NOVEMBER 28 • 2024 
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n the midst of a busy day, some 
five years ago, Linda Epstein 
Lenchner got an unexpected 
phone call.
“Are you the woman who grew up 
in an apartment on Richton Street 
in Detroit about 70 or 75 years 
ago?” Lenchner remembers the 
caller asking. “This is Stuart Rubens, 
who used to live there. If it’s you, I 
was your neighbor, and I saw your 
contact information on the web.” 
Lenchner quickly replied.
“By all means, that’s who I am,” 
she let him know and recalled 
the Richton Gang of seven boys 
and one girl hanging out together 
between the ages of about 4 to 13. 
They walked to and from Roosevelt 
Elementary School, knocked on 
doors after school to find out who 
could come out to play and sneaked 
rides on the elevator when children 
were not supposed to ride without 
adults.
The two, remembering nicknames 
and the fact that they were all 
Jewish, talked about their baseball, 
football and roofball games in the 
alley. The conclusion was that it 
would be nice to have a reunion, 
and Lenchner said she would see if 
she could organize that.
With phone calls and web 
searches, she tracked down the 
group, and they had their third 
reunion this past September — with 
some still employed past age 80. 
The young pals were together until 
families started moving north.
“We’ve had such good reunion 
times,” said Lenchner, married and 
the mother of two. “I never felt 
out of place because I was the only 
female. When we were choosing 
teams in those early years, I got 
picked before some of the boys 
because I was a good player. I 
later built a career in commercial 
real estate and was among the few 
women at first.”
Lenchner, who has been president 
of B’nai B’rith Women in Detroit, 
happily remembered being the only 
member of the group to be invited 

to watch Howdy Doody in the 
apartment of Larry Lowenthal, then 
being the first of the gang to get a 
television and now living most of 
the year in Israel.
Although it has been easy for 
Lenchner to join the reunion 
because she lives in Bloomfield 
Hills, Rubens did not mind flying 
in from Virginia. Mark Pittman 
gladly flew in from Salt Lake City. 
Lowenthal happened to be in the 
country to see family at reunion 
time. 
Bernard Goodstein came 
from Farmington Hills, Arnold 
Weintraub from West Bloomfield, 
Richard Edwards from Novi and 
Stephen Epstein, Lenchner’s brother, 
from West Bloomfield.
“I didn’t take charge of all of this 
year’s reunion because the gang 
knew the month held 80th birthdays 
for Mark and me and wanted a 
separate party for each of us,” 
Lenchner said.
This year, the gathering places 

included Beau’s Grillery and 
Roadside B & G, both in Bloomfield 
Township. The usual format is one 
event for the eight and another to 
include spouses and significant 
others.
Although Lenchner has enjoyed 
reunions as a graduate of Henry 
Ford High School in Detroit, the 
reunions from Richton have more 
depth because there are the lives of 
family members to recall in a more 
personal way. Grandparents and 
aunts and uncles also lived in the 
building.
When Rubens and Pittman come 
in, she will have them for a separate 
dinner. When Rubens wants to go 
to the cemetery to visit the graves 
of his family, a visit has meaning 
for her as well because she knew his 
family.
Each Richton alum has a black 
T-shirt with a picture of the 
building on the pocket. Lenchner 
and Rubens made them in 2019, and 
the shirts almost make them feel 

like a team.
Bernard Goodstein, who works 
part-time from home as a sales 
engineer representing backup 
power systems, said it’s a blessing 
to be back in each other’s lives and 
appreciates what it meant to live 
on Richton Street and make the 
friendship connections that have 
been reinvigorated. 
“The alley was our sports dome,” 
said Goodstein, married with three 
children and six grandchildren 
and listing membership in Temple 
Israel. “When the memories spilled 
out at the reunions, there were 
tremendous feelings. As we get 
older, there are times of reflection.”
Arnold Weintraub, an intellectual 
property attorney belonging to 
Temple Israel, said that he’s glad 
the group feels comfortable talking 
about the present as easily as the 
past. Divorced with a daughter 
and two grandchildren, he feels 
fortunate that members of the 
group turned out to be people of 

70-Year Friendships

The gang from Richton Street in Detroit gets together for reunions.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

OUR COMMUNITY

Steven Epstein, Richard Edwards, Stuart Rubens, Bernard Goodstein, Linda Epstein Lenchner, Arnold Weintraub, Larry Lowenthal 
and Mark Pittman