Ruth Bittner remembered the boy who always found a way to sit behind her and a friend on the school bus in junior high, where he’d tug at her hair, tease her and “sort of torture us,” she said.

Later, she’d see him at Ardmore Roller Rink in Forest Hills when they were in high school. He was a “very good skater,” Ms. Bittner said.

Slowly things changed. The teasing, the irritation turned into something else.

“You don’t know if you like someone and then it changes,” she said.

The change led to the marriage of Ruth and William Bittner right out of Gateway High School in 1959. They were part of the new school’s first graduating class and the marriage lasted until Mr. Bittner’s death at home at age 85 on July 31, from what is believed to have been a heart attack.

Mr. Bittner was co-founder

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