Bertha Smolian

Bertha Pizitz Smolian (born October 9, 1886 in Swainsboro, Georgia; died 1987 in Hollywood, Florida) was a civic activist and philanthropist.

Bertha was the daughter of Pizitz department store owner Louis Pizitz and his wife, the former Minnie Smolian. She graduated from Harvard's Radcliffe College in 1917 and then returned to Birmingham and became active in numerous social and philanthropic organizations. She hosted a daily radio program for women and supported numerous educational, childhood development and arts programs. She served on the boards of Mercy Home, the Alabama State Training School for Girls in Chalkville, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, Hadassah, and the Council of Jewish Women.

She married Joseph Smolian, who bought a share of the department store chain and served as an executive in the company, helping oversee its expansion into suburban areas in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Smolians were major supporters of psychiatric medicine at the Medical College of Alabama. The couple sponsored residencies and rented space for the program in the 1950s. In 1959 they donated $100,000, matched by federal funds under the Hill-Burton Act, to finance construction of the Smolian Psychiatric Clinic, the first new building constructed for Birmingham's planned Medical Center. They donated their own home to the Medical College for use as a faculty club and purchased a house next door, which became the Friendship House, and later funded the creation of the Smolian International House.

Smolian was inducted into the inaugural class of the Alabama Academy of Honor in 1969. She retired to Hollywood, Florida and continued her charitable efforts there, helping establish the Broward Education Foundation. She died in 1987.

External links

• Bertha Smolian at the Alabama Academy of Honor