In 1937, Ida Erbesfield (Horowitz) became a member of the Psi chapter of Delta Phi Epsilon at the University of Georgia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in merchandising and began her career as a buyer for Rich’s department store in Atlanta.
Atlanta Constitution, January 24, 1937
She married Maurice K. Horowitz on December 25, 1941. The wedding took place in the Newton, North Carolina, and the officiant was Rabbi William Greenberg. The bride wore an ice blue dress. After the wedding, the couple traveled to Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, the bridegroom’s hometown.
Note the date of the wedding. It was a little more than two weeks after Pearl Harbor was bombed and the thoughts of the newlyweds became serving their country. Maurice was classified as 4F and could not serve in the military. The couple chose to serve as civilians and spent a year manufacturing munitions in Alabama. Then they headed to Pearl Harbor and worked in civilian capacity for the U.S. Navy.
After the war, the couple joined with another couple they met in Hawaii and opened a chicken restaurant in Roanoke, Virginia. They sold the restaurant and moved back to Atlanta to be closer to family in 1947. The family now included a son and a daughter.
Maurice sold coffee and then joined Libby’s as a regional manager of frozen foods. In 1953, the couple founded M.K. Horowitz Company, a frozen food brokerage. Ida managed business operations, leaving Maurice free to work with customers. The Horowitzs sold the business in 1988. By then, they had grown the company into one of the southeast’s premier food brokerages.
The top American broker of Coldwater Seafood’s Icelandic Fish, Maurice served 42 years as the Consul and Consul Gerald of Iceland. The company invited him to Iceland in 1962 and the government bestowed the title first Atlanta Honorary Consul. That ultimately led to him being given one of the country’s highest honors – Knighthood in the Order of the Falcon. Ida was right beside him for his duties in Atlanta, DC, and Iceland.
After his death on May 19, 2008, the family established the Maurice Horowitz Memorial Scholarship at the University of Georgia. After his wife died, the name of the scholarship was changed to the Ida E. and Maurice K. Horowitz Memorial Scholarship.
Horowitz was a lifelong volunteer, following her children’s activities and dedicating herself to Ahavath Achim Synagogue. She died on February 28, 2012 at the age of 92.
