On September 15, a bittersweet day, I attended the closing on the sale of the building located at 3403-05 Main Street in Weirton, WV.  The building had been the Recht family’s locus of business operations in Weirton since the early 1960’s, alternatively in the form of Al and Florence Recht’s Weirton Market, Arthur J. Recht’s sole proprietorship law office, and most recently, Recht Law Offices.  The sale of the building marked the official end of the Recht family’s 80-plus year era in Weirton.

In the early 1940’s, the children of Harry and Bella Recht, born and raised in Aliquippa, PA, began to migrate to Weirton, then a booming steel town that offered them economic opportunity and a vibrant and growing Jewish community.  Five of Harry and Bella’s six children, Rose, Sally, Ruth, Al, and Arthur, eventually made their way to Weirton, with four of them residing on Palisades Drive (referred to by some at the time as Palestine Drive for its many Jewish residents), and one located a half-block away, while the sixth sibling, Florence Recht Heyison, settled not far away in Oil City, PA. In addition, a cousin, Mickey Recht, also found his way to Weirton. 

Upon settling in Weirton, the Rechts started their businesses and their families, became essential parts of the community at-large and of the Jewish community, and rode the meteoric rise that Weirton experienced through the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, witnessed the catastrophic fall of the steel industry that came at the end of the 70’s and 80’s, and stayed through the unstable forty years thereafter.  They and their spouses owned grocery stores and a pharmacy, were lawyers, merchants, school teachers, and homemakers.  They were children borne of the Depression, all of whom started out from scratch with no advantages given to them.  They raised their children in and among the hodgepodge of ethnicities and religions of people who had likewise sought opportunity in Weirton:  Poles and Greeks and Italians, Hungarians and Serbs and Indians, Christians and Jews and Hindus, those who were white and those of color.  

And along with the Recht siblings and their cousin, their spouses came to live in Weirton, and their spouses’ families became one with the Rechts and came to know Weirton:  the Hausmans and the Mangels and the Hearsts and the Rubensteins and the Karps and the Rosenthals.  And as well, via their children:  the Fishers and the Sierawskis and the Heatons and the Blankenships and the Marlins and the Seltzers and the Krasnicks and the Cohens.  

While the Rechts and their spouses and their children are no longer present in Weirton, their imprint remains:  Due to the efforts of my wife, Geri, and my children, Jacob, Sydney, and Rayna, the alley from Lee Avenue to Purdy Lane is now known as Recht Way, which by proclamation the Weirton City Council in 2025 unanimously named in honor of and to serve as a lasting legacy of the Recht family’s long and storied commitment to and impact on the City of Weirton.  Little did Harry and Bella know that their surname would be so commemorated, or that their children and grandchildren would be so memorialized, or that from the humble home above their mom and pop store on Franklin Avenue in Aliquippa, where they raised six hard-working, good, and decent children, would such a legacy be established.  The memories of those Recht children is a blessing to the town they settled in, labored in, raised their families in, and left a lasting impression on.

Life wasn’t always easy or fair to them.  Spouses died young, most likely the result of breathing in air filled with pollutants belched from the mill or water spoiled with chemicals dumped in the Ohio River, or of smoking, or of just bad luck.  Their children moved on and moved away, and one-by-one, so did they, or they stayed until their end.  And now, in Weirton, they number none.  Truly, the end of an era.

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