Pearl, born in 1930 into a blue-collar family, was placed in a children's home along with her three brothers, due to the illness and monetary problems of her parents. She was six years old at the time. At the age of eighteen, she had to leave and make her own way, but lacking training, she could only find low-paid jobs. She lived at the Rebecca Gratz Club which provided inexpensive room and board to single girls in Philadelphia, and where she developed a lifetime hatred of fried smelts.
There she met Henry, who pursued her tenaciously until she relented and married him in 1949. Their first real home was a third-floor apartment at 6th and Girard Avenue, a gritty Philadelphia location with around-the-clock trolly cars, fire engines and a black dust that rose up and coated newly-cleaned window sills within 48 hours.
Henry's paltry wages from the printing business plus Pearl's better wages from the cost-accounting department of Schmidt's Brewery were enough, with Pearl's careful management, to survice on and even save a little.
By 1952, they had saved $1000, and with this and a 4% G.I. mortgage bought their first house in the Logan section of Philadelphia for $8300. Here it was that Henry began to make paper in 1958. He was able to devote most of his free time to papermaking by dodging parental and domestic responsibilities, which were taken over by Pearl. Had she not done so, there would not have been a Bird & Bull Press. She continued her additional duties through the birth and rearing of their two daughters.
Visitors sometimes assume that Pearl assists Henry in his printing, but her interests lie elsewhere. She enjoys gardening, climbing the mountain on Eagle Road and exercising religously. She is an independent person that goes her own way. She has never read one of Henry's books throughout, but without her, there wouldn't be any books. That's just one of the many reasons Henry calls her Mrs. Wonderful.
