Eugene, Milton, Dollie, & Julius Fruchtgarten

In 1927, Adolph Fruchtgarten of New Orleans admitted his four children, Eugene (10), Milton (8), Dollie (5), and Julius (3), to the Home. What happened to Adolph’s wife, the former Henrietta Hyman, is unrecorded today.

During his seven years in the Home, Eugene distinguished himself at Isidore Newman School, earning varsity letters in football, basketball, and track, and the Leonhard Scheuerman Gold medal for excellence in athletics. He also made time for the debate and glee clubs, representing the latter in a boys’ choral performance at graduation.

Following his discharge from the Home in 1934, he attended Tulane University’s College of Commerce and Business Administration where he made news for his academic endeavors. In his freshman year, he was one of only seven students whose scholastic average was between 85 and 98, and in his junior year, he won the Oscar Lee Putnam scholarship. When he graduated from Tulane in 1940, he added class vice-president, glee club, and debate society to his college achievements.  

In 1941, the New Orleans Item reported that Sergeant Eugene Fruchgarten, then a non-commissioned officer at Camp Landing, had been chosen as one of eight men from their regiment to take the officers’ training course at Fort Bending, Georgia.

Before his discharge in 1937, Milton attended the Isidore Newman school before graduating from Delgado Trades School, which offered courses in aviation construction in maintenance.  By 1945, when he was honorably discharged from his World War II service, Technical Sergeant Milton H. Fruchtgarten had flown 50 missions over Europe as a B-17 aerial photographer and gunner. For his valor, Milton won the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters.

Read Milton’s account of his military experiences, as reported by the Times-Picayune, Dec. 2, 1944 here.

Dollie demonstrated a passion for writing. In 1931, her composition was named one of Newman School’s three best in the city-wide “Good Neighbor” contest sponsored by the Community Chest and the next year her book report on “Kak, the Copper Eskimo” by Vilhjamur Stefansson was published in the New Orleans Item.  While attending Joseph Kohn Commercial High School for Girls, she frequently competed in the Times-Picayune’s “Biggest News” contest and in 1939 won second prize ($7)  for her essay, “Another World Crisis,” about the threat posed by Hitler. When she graduated from religious high school at Touro Synagogue, she was chosen to deliver remarks. And at the Home’s 1939 anniversary, Dollie was featured in the production of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

In 1943, four years after her discharge from the Home, Dollie graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority, along with fellow Home alumna Lucille Pierce.

Dollie died in 2002 at age 80. 

Julius, the youngest Fruchtgarten sibling, attended Isidore Newman School from kindergarten through high school graduation in 1942. In third grade, he joined classmates (including Home peers Sam Levitan, Harry Kovner, Bennie Shanker, and Gilbert Borenstein) in a French-language production of “Le Cirque.” In high school he held a leading role in the glee club production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta, The Mikado. In 1940, he celebrated his confirmation at Touro Synagogue. 

Julius was discharged from the Home in August 1942.