Image courtesy of Rosenthal family

As founder of the nonprofit Stop Handgun Violence, John Rosenthal didn’t learn until years later that his own father had attempted suicide by handgun as a youth.

Sidney J. Rosenthal, who passed away May 22 at age 94, went on to a successful career as a real estate developer in Massachusetts and founder of Meredith Management Corp.

“I did not know this until five years after I started Stop Handgun Violence. Little did I know one of the reasons he was so proud,” John Rosenthal said. 

A Baltimore native, Sidney Rosenthal was a true “product of the Depression” who attended Suffolk Law School by nights while working as a carpenter during the day, shunned risky investments and taking on debt, and built the first mixed-income project financed by MassHousing.

His development company, Meredith Management Corp., took its name from a farm on Meredith Hill in Topsfield where he built his first single-family subdivision. The firm expanded into multifamily development in 1969, building the first mixed-income housing project with backing from Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency in Amherst, and completed large projects in Milford, Fall River and other communities.

Rosenthal shunned personal guarantees in financing projects, a product of his Depression-era upbringing, John Rosenthal said. The firm expanded into commercial and condominium development in the 1980s, and after John Rosenthal joined Meredith Management in 1983, his father was quick to spot the signs of a housing bubble in his new role as president of Grove Hall Savings Bank.

“[Developers] were coming in for loans where they had financial statements saying they were worth $100 million but had less than $100,000 in cash. He said, `Uh-oh, it’s coming,” John Rosenthal said.

Five years after he founded Stop Handgun Violence in 1994, John Rosenthal’s mother told him his father had attempted suicide by handgun as a youth growing up at the hands of an abusive father. The news underscored the importance of the nonprofit’s work in shaping Massachusetts’ gun control laws, Rosenthal said, and their role in the state’s lowest-in-the-nation gun death rate.

Two days after his father’s death, a gunman entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and shot to death 19 students and two teachers and wounded another 17 people.

“I buried my father at 94 years old and we celebrated his life, while we’re burying 19 elementary school kids from preventable violence, because adults have done nothing to make them safe,” he said. 

The family asked that donations in Sidney Rosenthal’s memory be sent to the following organizations: Stop Handgun Violence, 12 Broadway, Beverly MA 01950, www.stophandgunviolence.org or Council to Prevent Opioid Dependence, 1 Richmond Sq., Ste 125C, Providence, Rhode Island, 02906, www.CTPOD.org or the MorseLife Foundation, 4847 David S. Mack Dr., West Palm Beach, Florida, 33417, https://morselifefoundation.org.