Harry, Helen, & Evelyn Lubow

Following the death of her husband William, Bessie Kahan Lubow was left alone to raise her three young children. Although she was the beneficiary of a life insurance policy administered by B’nai B’rith’s Birmingham Lodge #725, by 1915 Bessie – on the urging of the Lodge — admitted the children to the Home.

 

 

Harry, who was three years old when he arrived, lived in the Home for fourteen years. After beginning his education at Isidore Newman School, he graduated from Samuel J. Peters Boys High School of Commerce. He left the Home in 1929 and returned to Birmingham, where he soon went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. Following his service as a corporal in the Army during World War II, he was promoted to the Corps’ chief payroll clerk, a position he held for a decade before retiring in 1969 and moving to Overland Park, Kansas. When he died in 1975, he was survived by his wife, the former Charlotte Wiencek, and his daughter, Harriet.

Helen lived in the Home until 1929, following her graduation from Isidore Newman School, during which time she won first prize in the American Chemical Society’s contest for best essay on “the relation of chemistry to the home.” She remained under the Home’s care as a “non-resident ward” until March 1932 when she completed her nursing studies while living at the Touro School of Nursing.

“We had a wonderful life in the Home,” said Helen in her 1982 oral history. “We had every advantage anybody could ever have….And I feel that I was very fortunate in being raised in the Jewish Children’s Home.”

With her nursing degree, Helen secured a position in Touro’s obstetrical department and became self-sufficient. In 1933, when she married Abe Louis Sizeler, a realtor, Helen was “given away” by Arthur Weil, the husband of “Aunt Edie” Weil, who had generously volunteered as Helen’s “Big Sister” while she lived in the Home. Helen and her husband raised two children, Marilyn and William, in New Orleans. Helen died in 1998 at age 86.

Evelyn, the youngest sibling, remained in the Home until 1933. While in the Home, she and Helen took part in the extravagant biblical tableaux to celebrate the Home’s 1926 anniversary, depicting scenes from Purim and Succoth. After receiving honorable mention for an essay she submitted to the Times-Picayune’s “Biggest News” Contest, Evelyn graduated from Joseph Kohn Girls’ High School of Commerce in 1932. She left the Home the following fall but remained in New Orleans to attend Touro Infirmary Nursing School.

Evalyn (as she later spelled her name) became a registered nurse in 1936 and fulfilled those duties until 1991 when she retired as Director of Nurses from Town & Country Nursing Home in Minden, Louisiana, after seventeen years of service. In recognition of her dedication to the nursing profession, in addition to other community activities, Evalyn was presented the key to the City of Minden and had her retirement day proclaimed “Evalyn Gibson Day” by resolution of the mayor.