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.
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 Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. 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 so that we can be prepared for whatever news the rest of 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Membership Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
