Kronenberg Siblings: Archie, Isadore, Louis, and Altie
In September 1914, in Dallas, Texas, Rachel Yonack Kronenberg died during the birth of her fifth child. Her widowed husband, David, was unable to support the family and by December admitted the four eldest children to the Home in New Orleans.
Apparently lacking documentation, the Home recorded the birthdays of each of the four Polish-born Kronenberg siblings by the corresponding Jewish holiday: Altie, Shevuoth 1903; Louis, Chanukah 1904; Isadore, Pesach 1907; and Archibald, Yom Kippur 1908.
In 1917, while his children remained in the Home, David died of tuberculosis.
Rachel Yonack Kronenberg, mother of Altie, Louis, Isadore, and Archibald, died in childbirth in 1914, and was buried in Shearith Israel Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas.
Altie lived in the Home until 1920. The 17-year-old described her exasperation in a note she wrote that year to her friend, Louise, the daughter of Superintendent Leon Volmer: “My darling Louise, I do love you truly and I like your mother. But oh! Your dad! … This is the truth because everybody knows me for my frankness, and your dad would say for my badness!”
Altie returned to Dallas where she married Nathan Robinson and raised a son. She was a member of B’nai B’rith, Council of Jewish Women, Temple Emanu-El, and its sisterhood. She died unexpectedly in 1960 at age 57.
Altie Kronenberg Robinson, Dallas Morning News, July, 22, 1923 (“Recent Bride Back From Wedding Trip”).
Altie Kronenberg Robinson, Dallas Morning News, June 10, 1960.
The Kronenberg boys shared their sister’s spirited temperament, earning the moniker “nuisance” from Isidore Newman’s Headmaster Clarence C. Henson for their failing grades in deportment. In a 1920 letter, Henson advised Superintendent Leon Volmer, that Archie and Louis had broken the window of a school neighbor while “shooting slugs” instead of doing their work in the school garden. After asking Volmer for suggestions, Henson concluded his letter sternly, “One thing, however, is certain; their conduct must improve.”
After the stern warning, the Home’s records reflect that all three Kronenberg boys were active members of the Home’s Boy Scout Troop and celebrated their confirmations in the Home’s synagogue in 1922. Over the next year, Louis and Isidore were discharged to their uncle Julius Yonack in Dallas. After serving as a private first class in the Army’s Medical Detachment Unit, Louis became a salesman in a retail liquor store, and in 1950 was living with his brother Isadore’s family. Louis died in 1969 and was buried in Dallas’s Shearith Israel Memorial Park.
When Louis Kronenberg died in 1969, his brother Isadore engraved the headstone, “My Dear Brother.”
After his discharge, Isadore married the former Norma L. Hicks and raised a son and daughter in Dallas, where by the late 1940s he worked in a leather belt factory. Isadore died in 1976 and was buried next to his brother Louis.
Louise Volmer, the superintendent’s daughter, kept this 1922 photo of Isadore “Isie” Kronenberg in her scrapbook. Courtesy of Louise’s daughter, Liz Crosby.
Isadore Kronenberg’s headstone in Dallas’s Shearith Israel Memorial Park.
Archie, the youngest Kronenberg, lived in the Home until 1925, when he graduated from Isidore Newman School, where he won a gold medal from the Underwood Typewriter Company for his typewriting speed (63 net words per minute). A talented athlete, Archie played on Newman’s basketball, baseball, and track teams, but most often made news for his prowess on the football field for his high school and later at today’s Baylor University in Dallas.
In October 1932, Archie, who had taken the last name Kroney, returned to New Orleans with the Baylor Bears to play Loyola University’s Wolves. The press welcomed the “former New Orleans prep football star” who was now also “the ace performer of the Baylor Bears…. Weighing 175 pounds and said to pack plenty of power, as well as speed, critics in the Southwest conference have hailed him as potential all-star material.”
In 1934, with undergraduate and law degrees from Baylor, Archie joined the legal department of the Lone Star Gas Company (today a division of TXU), later becoming its assistant general counsel. He held the position until he died in 1963, while undergoing heart surgery in Houston. He was survived by his wife, the former Martha Harper, and by a son and daughter.
Archie Kronenberg, c. 1920, likely at Bay St. Louis, MS, from the photo album of Home alumna Annie Schneider Pilsk.
Archie Kronenberg, wearing his Isidore Newman Manual Training School basketball jersey, Newman Pioneer, 1925.
A.D. Kroney, “Executive of Firm, Dies,” Dallas Morning News. Sept. 10, 1963.