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She never sought the limelight. She was hardly the warm and fuzzy greeter who would shmooze with customers about their lives or those of their offspring. She was a worker bee, pure and simple. Ruth Wilensky was also the heart and soul of Wilensky’s Light Lunch in Mile End.

Ruth died Friday at the age of 98, and was a going concern until her last days. She may have officially retired from behind the Wilensky’s counter five years earlier, but she would still show up to keep her kids on their toes. She was on hand last May for the eatery’s 85th anniversary bash, and even forced a smile or two for the occasion.

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When her husband and restaurant founder Moe Wilensky died in 1984, it was left to matriarch Ruth to keep the business going with her sons Asher and Bernard — who died in 2000 — and daughter Sharon. And to do so in the same no-nonsense manner as Moe did when he started the business in 1932.

Wilensky’s began simply enough as a deli-cum-cigar-emporium-cum-barber shop, with Moe’s dad, Harry, doing trims in the backroom. In 1952, Moe moved down the street on Fairmount Ave. and ceased with the scissors and the stogies to focus solely on the Wilensky’s Specials — a highly addictive yet cholesterol-laden amalgam of fried salami and bologna served with a dab of mustard on an unassuming roll — and sodas made from scratch with syrups.