Service for:
Irving Harold Perlmutter of Sarasota, Florida, passed away on the morning of September 18, 2023. Born to Hannah and Aaron Perlmutter on June 5, 1929, at Jewish Maternity Hospital on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he first lived on Attorney Street, and went on to become a graduate of Yale Law School, an Assistant United States Attorney, and a respected lawyer. He practiced law in Connecticut for over 50 years, including more than two decades serving as the secretary of the Connecticut State Bar Examining Committee. Irving was raised in Elmhurst, Queens, where his parents moved after his mother opened Hannah’s Sweet Shop, a candy store. Irving helped run the cash register with his older sister Ruth and older brother Ralph, each of whom predeceased him in the late 1970s. Irving’s father worked as a truck driver and laborer, including delivering for the New York Daily News. Irving graduated from PS 148, where he was noted for an “A” average and poor penmanship, afflicting the latter on his family and close friends in written letters and notes. His secondary education at Newtown High School, in Elmhurst, Queens, spanned World War II, including Irving turning 15 years old on the day before D-Day. The only one of his siblings to go to college, Irving graduated from Columbia University in 1951. After being accepted to both Harvard and Yale Law Schools, he moved to New Haven in fall of 1951, where he would remain for the next 65 years. During the summer of 1953, Irving met his future wife, Marsha Lipkin of New Haven, at The Morningside, her mother’s Catskill Mountain hotel in Sullivan County, New York. They started dating the day he returned to Yale for his final year and became engaged on November 21, 1953, after the Yale Harvard football game. Yale lost that day, 13-0. Irving won, and married Marsha Lipkin on January 24, 1954. They remained happily married until her passing in 2008. Irving graduated from Yale Law School in June 1954. He was drafted and served in the U.S. Army from October 1954 to June 1956. Irving returned to New Haven to serve as a clerk of the Superior Court. In 1961, he was appointed Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, representing the U.S. Government in civil actions. He served proudly in that capacity until the fall of 1963, when he returned to private practice, eventually forming the law firm of Ullman Perlmutter & Ullman, with former Connecticut State Attorney Abraham Ullman, and his son Andrew Ullman, with whom Irving practiced for nearly fifty years. Irving practiced law in New Haven until 2016, when he moved to Sarasota to live with Dr. Myra Rakoff, with whom he became romantically involved in the final decade of his life. Irving had a successful law practice with a particular expertise in bankruptcy, family law, trusts and estates, and prejudgment remedies. He has been a member of Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge Connecticut, since 1954. He has also been a member of Temple Beth Shalom in Sarasota, Florida, since 2016. Irving served for several years on the board of B’nai Jacob and the New Haven Jewish Historical Society. He was also a member of the Yale Club of Sarasota and the Retired Lawyers Club of Sarasota County. Irving is survived by Willa Perlmutter, Esq. (and her husband, Jody Craven), Robin Goldenson, M.D. (and her husband Richard Goldenson, M.D.), and his son Judge Adam D. Perlmutter (and his wife Erica Roseman). “Poppy” is also survived by his grandchildren Samantha, Rebecca and Max Goldenson, and Lorenzo and Ezra Perlmutter.