Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

A First-Time Mother, at Age 73

Is 73 too old to become a first-time mother? Not for the trailblazing Marylin Berger, who is now raising an 8-year-old boy from Ethiopia.

The New York Times describes Marylin Berger as “someone who knew her own mind.” Long before it was normal to see women on the news, Marylin Berger was the White House correspondent for NBC News. She would later go on to write for the New York Times. At 43, she remarried to Don Hewitt, the creator of “60 Minutes,” who passed away last year. At 60, she took up sailing and at 72, she began writing her first book. It was this book, about which the Forward recently wrote, that led her to Ethiopia and to motherhood.

Read more

Leah Berkenwald is the online communications specialist at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and a contributor to its Jewesses With Attitude blog, which cross-posts weekly with the Sisterhood.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.