Ethel, Dorothy, & Thelma Rosenbaum
Lucille Malach, a native of Lithuania, married Harry Rosenbaum of Colorado in 1907. Harry’s work as a self-styled cattle buyer and junk dealer kept the couple traveling, including to Odgen, Utah, where daughter Ethel was born around 1908, to Great Falls, Montana, where Dorothy was born in 1912, and to Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, where Thelma was born in 1914.
After Harry deserted the family and divorced Lucille, she took the girls to Fort Worth, Texas, where she had relatives, including Betty Gordon Rosen. When Lucille became unable to care for her three girls alone, reportedly due to injuries sustained in a vehicle accident, she sought to admit the girls to the Home. At first the Home accepted only Dorothy (8) and Thelma (7), and declined to admit Ethel (13), who was older than the Home’s maximum admission age of 12.
To keep the sisters together, Betty Rosen stepped in and pledged that she and other relatives would contribute $300 each year to the Home for the three girls’ maintenance. On that basis, the Home admitted Ethel, Dorothy, and Thelma in July 1921. Lucille later relocated to New Orleans, which enabled her to frequently visit her daughters in the Home.
Ethel, left, and Dorothy Rosenbaum, about seven years before their admission to the Home in 1921 with younger sister Thelma. Courtesy of Robert Portnoy, Dorothy’s son.
While in the Home, the girls enjoyed the opportunity to perform together in the 1926 anniversary celebration, with Ethel playing the role of Pharoah’s daughter in a Passover tableaux, while Dorothy and Thelma danced in depictions of Purim and Sukkot. They all attended Isidore Newman School, where Ethel played basketball, won a typewriting award from the Underwood Company, and earned recognition for an essay she submitted to the Times-Picayune’s “Biggest News of the Week” Contest.
Before graduating from high school, Ethel left Newman to attend Soule Business College. She moved out of the Home in 1926, but remained under the Home’s supervision as a non-resident ward while she lived in a nearby boarding house.
In May 1928, Ethel married Simon H. Pailet, a food broker, in a ceremony held at the Home. As reported in the Golden City Messenger, Superintendent Ed Lashman gave away the bride and Rabbi Goldberg officiated, in the presence of “over three hundred people, many of whom were New Orleans Alumni.”
Ethel died in 1984 and was buried in New Orleans’s Metairie Cemetery alongside Simon, who predeceased her in 1975.
Read a summary of Ethel’s 1983 interview about her childhood in the Home here.
Dorothy remained in the Home until 1929, when she was discharged to her mother. While in the Home, Dorothy developed a warm relationship with Irma Moses Moses, a dedicated volunteer from New Orleans’s Jewish community who served as the girl’s “Big Sister.”
Dorothy Rosenbaum, undated. Courtesy of Dorothy’s son, Robert Portnoy.
Dorothy Rosenbaum, left, with fellow Home resident, Rachel Tannenbaum, in the Home’s backyard, c. 1928 Courtesy of Robert Portnoy, Dorothy’s son.
In 1939, after working at Touro Infirmary as a secretary, Dorothy married Joseph Portnoy, who was the proprietor of a men’s clothing store on Canal Street. Former Big Sister Irma Moses, who remained in close touch with Dorothy, and whose husband owned United China & Glass Company, gave the newlyweds a set of china dishes. Years later, Dorothy brought her young sons along when she visited Moses in the generous woman’s fine Joseph Street home.
Dorothy died in 1990 at age 77 and was buried in New Orleans’s Hebrew Rest Cemetery No. 2.
Dorothy Rosenbaum Portnoy, 1939. Courtesy of her son, Robert Portnoy.
Reflecting their warm and lasting relationship, this is one piece of the china set that “Big Sister” Irma Moses gave to Dorothy Rosenbaum as a wedding present. Courtesy of Robert Portnoy.
Thelma remained in the Home until 1932, when she returned to her mother. While in the Home, Thelma joined other Home girls for a two week stay during the summer of 1926 at the Girl Scouts’ Camp Pruden along the Bogue Falaya River in Southeastern, Louisiana.
Two years later, she married Benjamin Wolf, who worked in the printing business. Together they raised three children, including Irma, named for the girls’ Big Sister.
Thelma died in 2003 and was buried alongside Ethel and their husbands.
Thelma Rosenbaum Wolf, 1934.
In Their Own Words
In 1983, as part of the Home Alumni project, JCRS President Howard “Duke” Prince interviewed Ethel Rosenbaum Pailet (age 75) and her sister Thelma Rosenbaum Wolf (age 69) about their childhood in the Home. Read Prince’s summary of Ethel and Thelma’s interview here.