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22 FALL 2017 degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — hers in English and his in philosophy. They married after her first semester at UNC, and they have been inseparable ever since. In December they'll celebrate their 48th anniversary. "My joke," Hart says, "is that I have been president of the Bobby Gitenstein Fan Club for 50 years." Gitenstein and Hart plan to retire to an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, from which they plan to indulge in the city's museums, theaters, and restaurants, and especially the Metropolitan Opera. They'll also have more time to spend with their Clockwise from top left: The Gitensteins — mother Anne, brother Mark, Bobby, father Seymour and sister Susan Assadi. Bobby and Don's family: daughter-in-law Karen Lee, son Samuel, (late) son-in-law Ellis Barber, and daughter Pauline Hart Barber. Bobby and Don enjoy loving on their granddaughter Ruby Mei and time together. Jewish. Recalling the nature of race relations in her insular hometown, Gitenstein says, "We could see things that were clearly contradictory to the values we were taught at home." Seymour Gitenstein, born in New York City, had aspired to be a concert pianist, but when he was 17 he moved to Florala to open the factory for his father's business. "I learned a lot from him — I didn't realize this until much, much later — about being a manager," Gitenstein says. "He was always about people. He had a factory and he knew every single person, he knew everybody's mother, father, cousin, aunt — who was getting married, who was having a baby." Gitenstein's husband, Donald Hart, also grew up in Florala, and she says she doesn't remember a time when she didn't know Don. But given that he's seven years older, they didn't begin dating until they were college undergrads — she was at Duke; he, after a four-year stint in the Navy, was finishing a second bachelor's degree at the University of Alabama. Both went on to earn their doctoral

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