Moses, Dora, and Jacob Lew

In 1907, Elias Lew admitted three of his four Russian-born children to the Home. Regarding the former Bella Glinky, the Home’s registry noted only, “Mother insane.”

Jacob, the eldest, after writing his senior essay on “Preparedness,” graduated from Newman School in 1916. He entered Tulane’s pre-medical class, but (according to a relative) dropped out when he contracted tuberculosis. New Orleans’s 1930 census shows Jacob working as an insurance agent, while living with his father and siblings. Jacob died in 1959 in Napa, California.

While in the Home, Moses played in the band, making headlines in the New Orleans Item in 1917 when he and his nineteen fellow musicians, conducted by Professor L. Gallo, reportedly “dispensed such good music at Heinemann Park that they probably will be invited again.” He graduated from Newman School in 1920, and was soon working in his father’s Rampart Street used furniture and bric-a-brac store, which he took over after his father’s death in 1932. Moses, who became known as a book collector, closed the store in 1970, only after the city appropriated the property to build a fire station. Moses died in 1975.

Dora, the youngest, returned to her father at age 16 in 1919, and joined Moses selling furniture in their father’s store. In 1938 she graduated from L.E. Rabouin Vocational School, which she attended in the evenings. Dora died in 1984, predeceased by her siblings, none of whom married. 

Moses Lew, 1920, Isidore Newman Manual Training School Pioneer.