The Ohringer Family

Abraham Ohringer (1888-1975) was one of six siblings who immigrated to the United States from Austria in the 1880s and settled in Western Pennsylvania. He chose Braddock, Pa., where he started a furniture store about 1911. He later opened branches in McKeesport and Greensburg before selling the company to a New York concern in 1957.

Abraham Ohringer married Helen Stern (1889-1983), who immigrated to the New York from Hungary in 1900 before moving to Braddock about 1904. “From the time I was a child I remember everything,” she told the Pittsburgh Press in 1979. “The house in Hungary, the river nearby, all the fruit trees. And everything imaginable that grew in the garden. How good the mushrooms tasted. My mother was a marvelous cook.”

Abraham and Helen Ohringer met when she came into his store to buy “a couple of comfortable chairs,” as she later put it. They had three children, Milton, Ruth and Betty.

Abraham and Helen Ohringer were generous donors to Jewish causes. Their $50,000 donation enabled Hillel Academy to purchase property for its high school in Squirrel Hill. Helen Ohringer was a founding member of the Ein Karem Chapter of Hadassah and was one of the first women in the country to sell more than $100,000 in State of Israel Bonds.

Ruth Ohringer married James Frank. Betty Ohringer married Irving Abrams.

For More Information

• Frank Family Papers finding aid
• Helen Ohringer oral history (NCJW)