Lucille, Marguerite, and Cecil Pierce, and James and Charles Whitehead

At the time of her death in 1935, Fannie Salmon Whitehead had been living in Mobile, Alabama with her five children. She was divorced from William Pierce, the father of her older children, Lucille (14), Marcus Cecil (13), and Marguerite (10). Although she was married to James M. Whitehead, the father of her younger children, James (5) and Charles (3), his work as an engineer on steamships kept him traveling, On the recommendation of the local B’nai B’rith Lodge, the elder James Whitehead admitted the five children to the Home.

With their admission to the Home, the Pierce and Whitehead siblings became one of about a dozen multi-generational Home families. Their late mother, Fannie, had entered the Home in 1903 with her siblings, Estelle and Maurice, following the death of Fannie’s father, Louis Salmon, from malaria. Fannie, Estelle, and Maurice lived in the Home until 1910, when they returned to their mother, Annie, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. A few years later, Annie relocated to Mobile, Alabama.

Lucille Pierce, who recalled hearing her mother speak favorably about growing up in the Home, remained there until 1938, following her 1936 confirmation at Temple Sinai and her 1938 graduation from Isidore Newman School. With $30 per month from her Uncle Dick and a $200 loan from the Home, Lucille packed her trunk and headed off to LSU in Baton Rouge where she earned money by working in the library. By attending summer school, she graduated a semester early.

In 1942, after marrying Harold Gilbertstadt, and earning a scholarship from the National Council of Jewish Women, Lucille attended Tulane’s School of Social Work. While earning her master’s degree, and while her husband served in the Army during World War II, she returned to the Home to work as a student counselor which provided her room and board.

Lucille and Harold later moved to Minneapolis where she worked as a social worker for the Jewish Family and Children’s Service and he practiced clinical psychology for the Veterans Administration. Following the birth of their first son (of four), Lucille stopped working until the boys were grown. After a 16-year hiatus, she returned to social work until she retired in 1982.

When interviewed in 2004 while attending a Home alumni reunion in New Orleans, Louise said, “But I’m not attached to people in Minneapolis — where I’ve lived for 46 years — as I am to people here. This is a most wonderful feeling to come back to my ‘family.’ They knew me as a little girl. They care about me.”  

While living in the Home, Marguerite Pierce participated in anniversary celebrations, including performing in a production of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” in 1939 and serving as a panelist in a debate of “Our Civil Liberties” in 1940. After graduating from Isidore Newman School in 1943, where she took part in student government, language clubs, and sports, Marguerite was  discharged into the care of her married sister, Lucille.  

In 1945, Marguerite married John Rarick, a lawyer who became a state district judge before serving as a member of Congress representing Louisianas’ 6th District from 1967 through 1975. They raised three children.

Marguerite Pierce Rarick died at age 78 in 2003. She is buried in Star Hill Cemetery in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Cecil Pierce distinguished himself in the Home, where he recited an essay at the 1941 anniversary program, and at Isidore Newman School, where he played varsity basketball and football. While attending Henry W. Allen School for a summer course in 1940, Cecil earned the title of “Most Studious Boy.” In October 1942, before graduating from Newman, he was discharged to his father in Mobile, Alabama.

Several months earlier, Cecil (age 19) had registered for the draft. During World War II, Sergeant Cecil Pierce served with the 379th Bomb Group as a Ball Turret Gunner. on a B-17 bomber known as the “Judy.” On December 30, 1943, while flying over France, the plane was attacked by German fighters. After reporting that he and his fellow gunner had shot down an enemy aircraft, the Judy was again struck and crashed in the Bois Morel. Although several crew members had evacuated by parachute, the dead bodies of Cecil Pierce and two flight mates were found in the wreckage. Pierce’s body remained in France, transferred post-war to the American Cemetery in Normandy. From Find A Grave.

Sgt. Marcus Cecil Pierce, 1942. From Find A Grave.

Grave of Marcus Cecil Pierce, American Cemetery in Normandy. From Find A Grave.

 James Whitehead lived in the Home until it closed in 1946, continuing as a non-resident ward for the next two years while living in New Orleans. The Home arranged for James to compete his education at Isidore Newman School, from which he graduated in 1947. He next attended Tulane University, where he joined Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, and then transferred to the University of Chicago, from which he earned a bachelor of arts in 1951.

He returned to Louisiana to earn his law degree from Tulane in 1959 and practiced law until he pursued a career in library sciences by earning a masters of science degree from Louisiana State University in 1963, and ultimately his Ph.D. in library and information sciences from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. Among his academic positions were assistant professor and law librarian of the College of William and Mary (1971-1976), finally retiring in 1996 after eleven years of service as librarian of the University of Georgia Law Library. In retirement, he turned to poetry, authoring a book “Sonnets” published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press, and winning second place in the 2010 National Amateur Poetry Competition for his poem, “New Orleans.”

In 1955, James married Elena Hulings. They raised four children. James died at age 82 in 2012 and was buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis, paying tribute to his military service as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War.  

Charles, the youngest of the Pierce-Whitehead siblings, was three years old when he arrived at the Home. According to Lucille and James, the Home provided a nurse to take care of him and he often looked out the front window to see if his father was coming back. After the Home closed in 1946, he completed his high school education at Murray Public High School in Minneapolis, before attending the University of Minnesota. Charles served as a corporal in the Army during the Korean War.

Charles died at age 59 in 1991. He was buried with military honors at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis.  

Charles Joseph Whitehead, University of Minnesota Gopher Yearbook, 1952.