Four and a half years ago, Zelda and Ira Segalewitz followed their oldest son, Scott – and, perhaps more significantly, their grandchildren – from New Jersey to Pittsburgh to Dayton. Now they live in Centerville and have become, as Rabbi Judy Chessin of Temple Beth Or says, "the heart and soul of our congregation."

"They’re here, they’re committed, they’re involved," Chessin says. "They might be retired, but they’re our youngest volunteers."

In their home in New Jersey, where Ira worked as an electronics/communication engineer and Zelda as a bookkeeper, the couple was also active in their synagogue.

Ira, now 69, was temple president for three years and on the board for 25. But Zelda, 66, says the couple is happy to be in Dayton.

"It’s a better life than I had in Jersey. Jersey was very clique-ish."

Here, they belong to Temple Beth Or, the Dayton Jewish Community Center and several social clubs.

Zelda stitches beautiful double-sided quilts for family and friends. For a recent project she crocheted an afghan for a temple fund-raiser.

She also makes blankets for needy children. Ira is on the temple’s board, serves as chair of the administrative committee, and is a perennial attendee/volunteer at any congregational event.

Under the congregation’s auspices, Ira has volunteered with Zelda at a food bank and a church, presented adult education programs on Yiddish and Maimonides, and used a nail gun at Habitat for Humanity.

Ira is a member of the DJCC’s Yiddish Club and the Holocaust Education and Yom Hashoah Committees.

A Holocaust survivor, he’s a regular speaker for the Holocaust Education Committee at its permanent installation at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

"The children really listen, and then they come up and want to get their picture with me," he smiles.

Ira’s first five years were spent in the largely Jewish town of Sarny in Poland, a place that came under Russian occupation at the start of World War II. When the Nazis began their attack on Russia, Ira’s father put his son and his wife on a train east. Ira would never again see his father; he believes he was killed in the battle of Stalingrad. Ira and his mother ended up deep in the Ural Mountains, where Ira’s mother worked in a Russian labor camp.

"As far as I know, we were the only Jews there," he recalls.

In the labor camp, Ira and his mother lived in a cubicle in an unheated barracks, sleeping on mats on the floor. His mother was paid in small amounts of food. A piece of cheese or a rat was a feast. Ira recalls his mother returning from her work with icicles hanging from her eyelashes. "People think it’s the story of my survival," Ira says, "but really it’s the story of my mother."

After the war Ira and his mother returned to Poland to find Sarny destroyed and most of their family murdered. They spent five years in an Austrian Displaced Persons camp before coming to the U.S.

"Heaven," Ira says of the D.P. camp. "Heat, beds, plenty of food."

By the time he got to Brooklyn, Ira spoke Polish, Russian, German, and Hebrew, although the language he shared with his mother was Yiddish.

Zelda was born in Brooklyn. Her parents had emigrated from Poland in the 1920s. Ira and Zelda met at a Halloween party. Ira was 18, Zelda "15 and a half."

"I went home and told my mother, I’ve met the man I’m going to marry," Zelda recalls. "She just laughed."

"I liked the way she looked at me and the way she spoke to me," says Ira. "My English was still rusty."

Zelda smiles. "I liked his accent, the way he said certain words."

Their attraction survived Ira’s stint in the Army in Korea and they married four years later. Ira got a degree in engineering. Before settling down in New Jersey to raise their four sons, the pair lived all over the country.

"Places we couldn’t get kosher meat," says Zelda with a laugh. "Our families got tired of putting our name in pencil in the phone book."

In the early 1990s, a heart attack forced Zelda to retire early. "I miss working," she says fervently, "but I’d always been crafty, and I just started to do more."

Crocheting is her first love — as evidenced by a curio cabinet filled with dolls she’s clothed in elaborate period costumes — and the yarmulkes she made for a celebration a year ago still appear on congregants’ heads.

Eighteen months ago, Zelda had a heart pacemaker and defibrillator implanted.

"It’s been great," Zelda says of her health since the procedure. She grins, heading for another chest full of quilts in the cheerful, comfortable apartment: "I’m going to go out fighting."

"Live every day the best you can," says Ira. "Be involved."

The phone rings. The ceiling of the lobby at Temple Beth Or is leaking and it’s time for Ira to get involved with that.