Harvey Jay Rosenberg

A southerner for the last 47 years, he remained a Brooklyn boy at heart, talking about the Dodgers as if they’d never left New York. Jackie Robinson was his hero for life.

Harvey attended Queens College and Rutgers University before receiving his Ph.D. from New York University in 1969. He left New York soon after, and moved with his family to Southwest Virginia where he taught at what was then Radford College before opening up a rental business in Blacksburg, Va. After a dozen years of renting chainsaws, tillers and punch bowls, he sold his business and reinvented himself again, becoming head of the Small Business Institute at Virginia Tech. When his own kids started college, he returned to college, too, receiving a master’s degree in counseling education.

He moved to Columbia initially for an internship, but he fell in love with and married a nurse he met there, making South Carolina his home for good. He spent a decade working at Bryan Psychiatric Hospital, running a small practice on the side, and volunteering as a docent at the Columbia Museum of Art.

In his retirement, he returned to his first discipline, physics, working for two years as an adjunct professor at Midlands Technical College. He could often be found in his favorite chair working on a crossword puzzle or old physics problems. Other pastimes included watching Seinfeld, eating chocolate babka, sipping cream soda, and waxing poetic about stickball on the streets of Brownsville.

He is survived by Linda Rosenberg, his loving wife of 26 years, and their granddaughter, Haleigh, who called him Papa; by his children, Madelyn Lazorchak (Butch Lazorchak) and Andrew Rosenberg (Melanie Ross); stepdaughters Anna Jordan and Sarah Lempesis (Justin Kyanko); and grandchildren Graham, Karina, Jules and Riley.

He was preceded in death by his father, Irving Rosenberg, his mother, Lillian Levine, and his sister, Claire Rockower.

The family would like to thank the capable and caring group at South Carolina Hospice and Palliative Care, especially Aimee, Sheila, Rick, June and Debbie.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Jackie Robinson Foundation or South Carolina Hospice and Palliative Care.

Arrangements under the direction of Dunbar Funeral Home (Devine), COLUMBIA, SC.