Morris Fishman, ninety-two, of Squirrel Hill, died Sunday, May 5, 2026, surrounded by his children at the family home on Murray Avenue. He had lived in Squirrel Hill since the day he was born, and at the Murray Avenue house since 1962. The house had not changed much in those sixty-four years; neither had he.
Morris was born March 11, 1934, the only son of Yaakov and Devorah Fishman, Russian-Jewish immigrants who had come to Pittsburgh in 1923 by way of Hamburg. His father drove a fruit truck along the Strip District route; his mother kept the kitchen and the home and, when Morris was old enough to understand it, kept a strict shabbos that the family still talked about decades later. Morris attended Pittsburgh Public Schools — Colfax Elementary, Allderdice High School, Class of 1952 — and Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), where he studied structural engineering and graduated in 1956.
He worked thirty-eight years at U.S. Steel as a structural engineer, beginning in the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock and finishing his career at the Pittsburgh headquarters. He worked on bridges, blast-furnace foundations, and — in the last years of his career — the seismic retrofit assessments that became standard practice across the industry after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. His name appears on many drawings; the steel is still standing in many places it was put.
Morris met Sylvia Cohen on a blind date arranged by his cousin Naomi in 1959. They were engaged six months later and married at Sanctuary chapel on June 12, 1960. Morris broke the glass with one motion — a tidy step, Sylvia later said, the only thing about the wedding that was tidy. They were married for fifty-eight years until Sylvia's death in 2018. He missed her every day for those last seven and a half years and said so often.
Morris served as president of Beth Shalom Synagogue from 1992 to 1996 and as treasurer for nine years before that. He read Torah on Shabbos for thirty-five years, by which time many congregants no longer remembered a Shabbos at Beth Shalom without him. He served on the Pittsburgh Jewish Community Foundation board from 1998 until 2010. He served on the board of the Squirrel Hill Y from 1986 until his retirement from U.S. Steel in 1994. He volunteered as a tutor at Hillel Academy from 1995 to 2012. He attended every Pittsburgh Pirates home opener from 1959 until 2024, missing only the 1994 strike year. He died with Pirates tickets for the 2026 home opener in the drawer of his bedside table.
Morris is survived by his three children — Aaron Fishman of Squirrel Hill, Rachel Fishman-Adler of Chicago, and Joshua Fishman of Brookline, Massachusetts — and by seven grandchildren whose names he could recite, in birth order, from anywhere in a thirty-minute conversation: Elliott, Tamar, Benjamin, Hannah, David, Naomi, and Levi. He is also survived by his sister Sharon Fishman-Goldberg of Pittsburgh, by his brother-in-law Gerald Cohen of Tampa, and by a great many nephews, nieces, and old friends.
He was preceded in death by his wife Sylvia (2018, ז״ל), by his parents, and by his beloved cousin Naomi Cohen-Stein of Pittsburgh (2019).
The funeral is Tuesday, May 7, at 11 AM at Sanctuary chapel, with burial immediately after at Beth Shalom Cemetery. Rabbi Avraham Lieberman of Beth Shalom Synagogue will officiate. The family will sit shiva at the Murray Avenue house from Tuesday evening through Sunday evening; the shiva minyan will be held nightly at 7:30 PM.
The family asks that no flowers be sent. Donations in Morris's memory may be made to Beth Shalom Synagogue or to the Pittsburgh Jewish Community Foundation.
He loved the Pirates, the steel under bridges, his three children, his seven grandchildren, the readings on Shabbos, and Sylvia. In that order, he would have said, and only because Sylvia would have insisted he say it that way.