When Marvin Blechman’s 7-year-old son died of leukemia in 1960, it didn’t take him and his wife long to decide they wanted his memory to live in a way that would help other people. A year later, they founded the City of Hope’s Bobby Blechman Memorial Chapter for Blood Research, which has since raised nearly $4 million for cancer research. “It was something that was so close to his heart,” said Mr. Blechman’s wife, Marlene. Mr. Blechman, 73, died of lung cancer and hepatitis C on Tuesday, March 2, in his winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Mr. Blechman was born in Chicago and graduated from Crane High School in 1948. After getting a degree in accounting from Roosevelt University, he worked for seven years at accounting firms in the Chicago area. In 1951, he married his childhood sweetheart, Marlene Gilbert. He then entered the dry cleaning business with his brother-in-law and served as vice president of Continental Cleaners Inc. and Lamar Cleaners. For more than 35 years, Mr. Blechman helped operate the family’s eight dry cleaning stores in the Chicago area. The family sold the cleaning business in the early 1990s. Not ready for retirement, Mr. Blechman returned to his first love of accounting. He taught himself computerized accounting and worked part-time for accounting agencies. Mr. Blechman will be remembered most for his dry wit, his wife said. “He never ceased to make people laugh,” she said. Besides his wife, survivors include two sons, Joel and Sanford; four grandchildren; and several nephews and nieces. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, 303 Dodge Ave., Evanston.
