Bursak, dyslexic inventor, left
mark on Jewish community

By Leon Cohen
of The Chronicle staff

When manufacturer and inventor George J. Bursak visited his hometown of Milwaukee from Florida during the Milwaukee Jewry sesquicentennial celebration in 1993-94, he saw the Milwaukee Public Museum’s exhibit “The Golden Land” telling the story of Milwaukee’s Jewish community.

And he determined that this exhibit had to be preserved and have a permanent home after it closed and moved out of the museum.

The project couldn’t be realized during the lifetime of this manufacturer and inventor, who overcame personal handicaps to make a fortune and create familiar products.
Bursak died on April 15 at age 91.

But his vision will come to fruition in the near future with the creation of the Jewish Heritage Museum in the Helfaer Jewish Community Services Building that is part of the Milwaukee Jewish community capital project.

And that is just part of the legacy that Bursak left to the Milwaukee Jewish community. Perhaps it is most visible at present in the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, where the library is named for him.

Yet according to Bert L. Bilsky, executive director of the Jewish Community Foundation, the endowment development program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Bursak also helped Lubavitch of Wisconsin build its chapel at the Chabad Lubavitch House on Kenwood Ave. and helped Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah with its building.

Moreover, he left a fund of more than $1 million in the foundation for support of local Jewish community causes and projects “that were important” to him and his wife, Ida, during their lifetimes, including the MJF annual campaign.

“Here’s a man who grew up in Milwaukee, moved to Florida in the 1960s, and never forgot that this was the place where he made his money and called home,” said Bilsky. “He was a wonderful man.”

Bursak’s son Barry Bursak, an environmental consultant in Chicago, said his father’s relation to Judaism was “a cultural connection, not so much religious.” Yet he gave support to “a number of synagogues” as well as to the MJF and to the state of Israel, he said.

‘Keep trying’

According to his own autobiographical account, Bursak was born in Binghamton, N.Y., on April 18, 1913. His parents were Russian immigrants who moved to Milwaukee in 1916.

He had what is known today as dyslexia, a physiological condition that interferes with the brain’s ability to process written words.

As this condition was not understood when he was a child, “my teachers thought I was not bright,” Bursak told The Chronicle on the occasion of the publication of his book “If I Can Do It, So Can You: Triumph Over Dyslexia” (1999; the article appeared in the Feb. 25, 2000, issue).

He may have had difficulty with reading, but had mechanical skill and inventiveness. When he was sent to a trade school after sixth grade, “I really was one of the better students in the shop and I was helping other students, and I loved it,” he wrote. A telegraph that he created when he was 13 was featured in the Milwaukee Journal.

During the early years of the Great Depression, Bursak became a barber at his father’s insistence. His sister, Rose Granof, said there are still people alive in Milwaukee who remember getting their hair cut by Bursak.

However, Bursak hated the work. In 1940, he got a job in a defense plant, which was where his career really began.

His talents for mechanical troubleshooting and inventive problem-solving enabled him to rise quickly from the machine shop to the planning department. After the war, he decided to become a manufacturer on his own.

Bursak credited his wife, Ida, whom he married in 1936, with being essential to his later success. “Every time I went into business, she ran the business and I fooled around in the machine shop,” he told The Chronicle in 2000.

His many inventions included rubber bumper cushions for cars, machines for making one-use packets of various kinds (like the ubiquitous ketchup packages in some restaurants), a hand lotion and different kinds of medical supplies.

He and his wife moved to Florida in the mid-1960s. They retired in 1977 and she died there in 1999, after which Bursak returned to Milwaukee.

To readers of his book, Bursak gave the following advice: “Believe in yourself. Keep trying, and keep on trying again. Reach out to the people around you. And finally, give something back.”

In addition to his son and sister, he is survived by son Michael (Judy) Bursak of Redwood City, Calif.; and two grandchildren.

The funeral service was held April 18. Interment was at Mound Zion Cemetery.

Memorial contributions to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation would be appreciated by the family.