Marvin Goldberg, 80; was volunteer at cultural sites

In Center City, Marvin Goldberg and his wife, Joan, were out and about enough to happen upon newspaper interviewers and become walk-on actors in others' stories.

On March 6, Mr. Goldberg, 80, a volunteer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and other cultural organizations, died of complications from surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital.

Sometimes the Goldbergs happened into stories in which they had no part at all.

After a burglar attacked an 81-year-old man in his home on Delancey Street near 20th Street in August 2001, the Philadelphia Daily News interviewed the Goldbergs as they walked to a movie.

"Here's my weapon" if ever attacked, Mr. Goldberg said, referring to his two canes.

But he was sanguine about seeming vulnerable. "It's not just Center City," he said. Crime "could happen anywhere."

So could accidents.

In October 1997, the Goldbergs spent a Sunday afternoon at an Avenue of the Arts celebration.

Afterward they walked north on Broad Street with three longtime friends, among them Common Pleas Court Judge Berel Caesar.

Near Pine Street, the ground shuddered, a sign fell from a building, and Mr. Goldberg was hit. He was taken to a hospital and, after receiving eight stitches on his head, released.

Caesar died from his wounds.

"There were five of us," Mr. Goldberg told the Daily News, "and any one of us could have gotten it."

But he lived on, to be seen frequently at cultural events.

In retirement, said his son, Kenneth, Mr. Goldberg was a regular volunteer at the membership desk at the Art Museum and at the visitor information desks at the Kimmel Center and City Hall.

"We ushered for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Network for New Music," among others, Joan Goldberg said. "We just liked working with the groups, and they enjoyed us."

Born in Norristown, Mr. Goldberg graduated from Olney High School in 1947 and worked in his father's Norristown furniture store until his father retired in the 1960s.

Mr. Goldberg then opened his own furniture store in Levittown. In the 1970s he opened a second on Route 309 in Montgomeryville and a third in Kensington.

He owned all three at the same time, said his son, and, after becoming a representative for furniture manufacturers, he retired in the 1990s.

Sort of.

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Goldberg is survived by daughter Cynthia Kahn, a sister, and four grandchildren. Services were held March 8.