Sylvia Grossman, 90, former Deputy Nassau County Attorney, president of the Roslyn School Board and founder of two local synagogues, died June 22, 2008 after a long illness.

Grossman, who became a lawyer while in her forties, while raising three sons in Roslyn, served as Deputy County Attorney and Executive Assistant to Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson in the late 1960s. During that time, she was also a member of the Roslyn Board of Education and served as its president in 1971. She was a founder of Temple Sinai and Temple Beth Sholom and numerous other civic and religious organizations.

A native Long Islander, Sylvia Gluck was born in Lawrence in 1917, the fourth of five daughters of Sam and Ida Gluck. She graduated from Cornell University in 1938, earned a master's degree from New York University in 1939 and, after war was declared in 1941, married Irwin Grossman, then a private in the U.S. Army. During the war, she attended welding school to join the ranks of "Rosie the Riveter" and also served as a nurse's aide, tending to wounded troops.

The couple moved to Roslyn following the war. Grossman quickly entered into the volunteer community, becoming an active member of numerous service associations and creating organizations where none existed to meet what she saw as pressing community needs. Thus, she served as president of the Roslyn Visiting Nurse Association from 1953 to 1985 and as director of the Visiting Nurse Association of Long Island. She helped found the Roslyn-Glen Cove League of Women Voters, the Better Roslyn Association and the Roslyn chapters of Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women. She served on the Town of Hempstead Board of Ethics.

In 1972, Grossman and several friends established Community Advocates to support housing and other assistance for low-income families. The organization, which has grown in scope and prominence over the decades, has just established, in her memory, the Sylvia Grossman Fund to Help Homeless Families in Crisis.

Grossman also started buying and bringing cake and cookies to the young patients at the Ronald McDonald House, becoming known as "The Cake Lady."

In recognition of her service to the county, she received the Volunteer Merit Award of the Junior League of Long Island and was listed on the Town of North Hempstead's Women's Roll of Honor in 1994.

Meanwhile, Grossman started at Brooklyn Law School, arranging her classes so she could be home when her children returned from school in the afternoon. She passed the New York State bar on her first try and in 1976 was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in the same ceremony that admitted her son. In addition to her work with the county attorney's office, Grossman served as staff attorney for the Community Legal Assistance Program.

A Democratic Party activist, Grossman served on the Nassau County Democratic Committee during the 1950s and 1960s and ran several local campaigns. Avid tennis players, Grossman and her husband helped found the Shelter Rock Tennis Club.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by her three sons - William, a musician in New York; Edward, a senior counsel with the House of Representatives in Washington, DC; and Richard, of Albertson; her sister, Dorothy Margolin of New York; and her grandson, David Grossman, a producer with Politicstv.com in Washington, DC. Also, her nieces, Laurie Gioia of New York and Vicki Wyman of Miami and nephews, John Grossman of Roslyn and Robert Grossman of Northport, all Roslyn High School graduates.