Louis, David, & Esther Berman
In 1920, Russian immigrants Jacob and Sarah Berman and their four children were living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Jacob repaired shoes. In 1922, for reasons not known today, Jacob admitted Louis (10) and David (12), the two youngest of his three sons, to the Home. The next year, he admitted his daughter Esther (10).
David lived in the Home for two years, during which time he joined the Home’s Boy Scout troop with his brother, Louis. In 1924, David was discharged to his father in Chattanooga.
Louis remained in the Home until 1930, earning a Star Award and Merit Badges from the Boy Scouts. He also played the role of King Nutcracker in the children’s performance of The Nutcracker Suite for the Home’s 1930 anniversary celebration before graduating from Delgado Trade School. He was discharged later that year to relatives, Mr. and Mrs. J. Kushner, in Chattanooga.
Louis worked as a clerk in Sid’s Liquor Store, making news in 1947 and again in 1949 when the store was robbed. Although the bandits made off with hundreds of dollars on both occasions, Louis prevented an even larger loss of cash. According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, only moments before the first robbery, Louis had smartly placed several hundred dollars in a paper bag which he then hid under the counter.
Louis later made his home in Greensboro, N.C., where he died in 1976.
Louis and Esther Berman, back, are pictured with Jacob Testa and Hilda Crystal, front, at the Home in 1925. Photo courtesy of Mika Singer, niece of Hilda Crystal White.
Esther, too, remained in the Home until 1930, when she was discharged to the Kushners in Chattanooga with Louis. She had graduated that year from Isidore Newman High School, where she had earlier personified one of the original thirteen colonies in a pageant celebrating George Washington’s birthday.
Back in Chattanooga, where she kept in touch with fellow Home alumnae Ida and Rae Crystal, Esther held leadership positions in Junior Hadassah and Young Judaea, a peer-led Zionist youth movement.
Esther Berman appears with other Isidore Newman School students in costumes for George Washington’s birthday in 1924. The first five children (starting from the left) are Naomi Cantor, Edith Tannenbaum, Esther Berman, Dorothy Rosenbaum, and Ida Crystal — all from the Home. Unattributed photo from New Orleans States, Feb. 27, 1924.
In 1938, Esther married Albert Levine of Union, South Carolina in a ceremony officiated by the groom’s father, Rev. H. Levine. She was given in marriage by her father, Jacob. By 1943, the couple had moved to Greensboro, N.C., where Albert worked for Maslow’s Jewelry Store and Esther gave birth to a daughter, Sandra. Tragically, when Sandra was seven months old, Esther died by suicide. She was buried in Greensboro’s Hebrew Cemetery.
Esther Berman, Chattanooga News-Free Press, March 13, 1938.