PITTSBURGH — The emotional story of a ring - a promise fulfilled - and a push to bring happiness back to the Tree of Life synagogue.
It’s one family’s emotional plan to make sure their loved one didn’t die in vain - and happiness comes back to the Tree of Life.
>>> Overcoming Hate: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, 5 Years Later
And that plan centers around one very special ring.
Rose Mallinger was 97 years old, but young at heart. She promised that one day, her rings would go to her granddaughters, and that’s what has happened.
The engagement ring Rose was wearing when she died is now her granddaughter Amy’s engagement ring.
The family told Channel 11′s Nicole Ford that this is just one step to bringing joy and happiness back to Tree of Life.
“Every day when I put the ring on, it’s like a part of her is coming with me,” Amy said.
As the sun sets on a quaint Squirrel Hill street, one home is built on more than just a sturdy foundation where walls hold the greatest memories and stories are passed down like heirlooms.
“My mom and her sister would be sitting on the porch kind of like how me and him are doing now,” Rose’s son Alan said.
“We’d be having dinner here and Amy would sneak in and all of a sudden my mom would see her and it would scare the heck out of her, cause she couldn’t hear her coming, the TV would be so loud,” Rose’s son Stanley said.
Each generation adds its own chapter to the Mallinger family history, and at the center of each moment: Rose, the matriarch.
It all started with the story of eternal love between Rose and her husband Morris which began with this ring in 1950.
“Anytime we’d play games she would shout out the answer even if she wasn’t on that team. So that was a problem but we tried to work through it,” Amy said.
“I’m so much like my mother that... Go ahead, you can tell them,” Andrea Wedner said to her husband, Rob.
“When we knew we were going to be grandparents we were trying to decide if they were going to call us grandma or grandpa and Andrea did not want to be called Bubbie because in her mind there is only one Bubbie and that was her mother,” Rob explained.
“We’d sit on the porch and watch the sunset and look at all the neighbors walking by and sit here and talk about anything. It made me have a love for family that I don’t know if I would have ever had if we did not sit on this porch at night all the time,” Amy said.
Sitting on the porch, Amy couldn’t help but reflect on one of the last conversations she ever had with her Bubbie.
“She just told me, ‘You are going to get one ring and Hillary will get one ring and that’s that,’ I said, ‘Okay,’ and she said, ‘When I’m gone,’ and I was like, ‘But that’s not going to be for awhile,’ and she was like, ‘Well when I’m gone you’ll get it,’” Amy recalled.
No one could imagine the horror that would happen just weeks later. Rose was one of the 11 people murdered inside the Tree of Life synagogue – her wedding ring still firmly on her finger as she lay dying next to her daughter Andrea. That unbroken circle is a representation of 68 years of love for her husband and the family they created together.
“It was one of the first items we got back. They gave us a bag of her jewelry to kind of identify her. It was definitely hard to see it the way that it was at the time and not see it on her and know that I’ll never see it on her again. I think that was the hardest part for me,” Amy said.
Five years later, the sparkle of that diamond now on Amy’s finger signifies so much more than a ring.
“This ring symbolizes my future with Tom, but it also symbolizes my family and what he’s coming into and what I’m going into as well,” Amy said.
A man bravely stepping into this big family, Tom knows the foundation of love was built by a woman he wishes he’d met.
“I came here and I was probably a little overwhelmed for the first year. It’s just incredible the way their family is,” Tom said. “From what everyone tells me there is a large part of her in Amy and I’m very lucky to know that.”
The Mallinger house sits just blocks from another house full of memories for this family: the Tree of Life synagogue.
The beginning of Andrea and Ron’s story led to their wedding, children and a new generation of bar and bat mitzvahs.
“My aunt and Andrea’s family were a pew or two apart at the Tree of Life synagogue and my aunt asked Andrea would you mind if my nephew called and Andrea said okay, and that’s how it started,” Ron explained.
“You may think this put an end to the Tree of Life but it hasn’t, this is only the beginning. This one moment is not going to take away from all of the future happiness that are going to be happening at the Tree of Life,” Alan said.
For the Mallingers, that new beginning will start with Amy and Tom’s walk down a new aisle.
“I think getting married in a place where she lost her life is something that seems a bit morbid, at first, but then you think this was the last place that she took her last breaths and maybe the last thing she was thinking about was her family so having her family back together in this place would kind of make her happy again,” Amy said.
“I’ve always said we can’t change what happened, that we have to move forward and enjoy every day and that’s what my mother would have wanted. She’s watching down and seeing all the joy,” Andrea said.
Much like the ring, the Mallingers remain unbroken.
“I hope they have as good of a marriage as my parents had and I think they will,” Andrea said.
Much like the ring, the Mallingers remain unbroken.
The family said they know it will take some time before the building is ready to host the wedding.
They are simply willing to wait to bring happiness back to the place that meant so much to Rose.
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