Mashinka Siblings: Sadye, Fannie, Sol, Bessie, Pearl, & Esther

In October 1919, Maurice (Morris) Mashinka, a shoemaker, and his wife, the former Annie Medovnich, were raising their seven children in Houston, Texas, when Annie died. Four months later, Morris, a native of Evangrod, Russia who was naturalized in 1915, admitted his six youngest children to the Home: Sadye (9), Fannie (8), Sol (6), twins Bessie and Pearl (4), and Esther (1). 

According to Fannie, Morris accompanied his children on the train from Houston to the Home in New Orleans. She remembered sleeping in a berth in the Pullman car and her father waking her when the train, on a barge, crossed the Mississippi River. After his children were in the Home, Morris returned to Houston and in 1922 married Sophie Pachter, with whom he fathered three children. Fanny recalled her father returning to the Home to visit only once during her twelve years there. 

Sadye lived in the Home until September 1927, following her graduation from Francis T. Nicholls Industrial School for girls. She was discharged to her father and stepmother in Houston, before moving to live with her aunt and uncle, Dora and Frank Lerner. In 1930, she worked as a salesperson in a retail shoe store.

In 1936, Sadye married Charles Herbert Horwitz, in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Max Geller at Houston’s Congregation Agudath Israel. They raised a daughter, Arlene.

Sadye died in 1995 at age 84.

Sadye Mashinka with unidentified male companions, n.d. Except where otherwise noted, photos on this page are from the scrapbook of Bessie (Mashinka) Maas Rothstein, courtesy of her daughter, Debbie Wizig.

Fannie lived in the Home until 1932, when she was discharged to live with her aunt and uncle, Dora and Frank Lerner, in Houston. While in the Home, Fannie climbed trees, helped the Home’s dressmaker Eola by sewing hems, and took cornet lessons. “I was happy,” she later recalled. “School didn’t mean that much to me,” said Fannie, explaining why she transferred from Isidore Newman School to take secretarial courses at Kohn Commercial High School while working part time at Maison Blanche Department Store on Canal Street. 

Once in Houston, Fannie worked as the first switchboard operator for Weingarten’s Grocery Store where she earned $10 per week, which she said was then “a lot of money.” In 1942, she married Irving “Ook” Gerson, in a ceremony officiated by the rabbi of Congregation Agudath Israel. They raised two daughters, Susan and Judy. In her late 80s and early 90s, Fannie shared household hints (in addition to a joke and a consumer complaint) which appeared on the pages of the Houston Chronicle.

Fannie kept in touch with Bill Parker, who served as the Home’s beloved maintenance man and custodian from 1923 through 1946, and who continued to maintain the building after the Jewish Community Center took over the site. In a 1971 letter to Fannie, Bill recalled many years earlier carrying her “from room to room” in the Home when she was recuperating from a broken leg. “And if I have it to do all over again, I will do the same.” He closed the letter “with love from an old friend to a truer friend.”

Fannie, who like her siblings had changed her last name to Maas, died in 2008 at age 96. She was buried next to her husband “Ook” in Houston’s Emanu El Memorial Park.  

In this clip from her 2003 video interview with JCRS Executive Director Ned Goldberg, Fannie Maas (Mashinka) Gerson talks about transferring from Isidore Newman School to attend business school. Courtesy JCRS.

Later in the same 2003 interview, Fannie fondly recalls spending time at the Home’s summer camp in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Courtesy JCRS.

Sol lived in the Home until 1929, before returning to Houston where he joined Sadye in living with their aunt and uncle, Dora and Frank Lerner. During World War II, having earlier changed his name to Sol Maas, he served as a private in the Army. He later worked as a clerk for an electrical appliance wholesaler. 

In 1980, at age 65, Sol died of cardiac arrest. Honoring his Army service, he was buried with a military marker.     

While in the Home from 1920 to 1934, endearing photographs of Bessie and Pearl regularly appeared in the Golden City Messenger, at times with the caption, “Our Twins.” In 1932, they transferred from Isidore Newman to Joseph Kohn High School, where Bessie was elected an officer of the student body. In their religious education, both girls graduated in 1933 from Temple Sinai’s High School. 

After their discharge from the Home, Bessie and Pearl returned to Houston where they reconnected with their older siblings. In 1940, Bessie worked as a wrapper at Byrd’s while Pearl was a salesperson at Levy Brothers Dry Goods and then Battelstein’s Department Store. In 1943, the twins joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which they served until 1946, with duty in Germany. After the Army, Bessie and Pearl returned to Houston where they lived together while working as secretaries, Bessie at Congregation Emanu El and Pearl for a wholesale jeweler.

Loose photos from the Mashinka scrapbook collection. The top two photos show Bessie (left) and Pearl at the Home’s summer camp. The bottom photo, which shows a group of Home children around an upright gramophone, bears a note in what appears to be Fannie’s handwriting, “I made this dress in school.”

One of relatively few intact pages from the Mashinka scrapbook collection, showing camp photographs. In the bottom left photo, the circled face appears to be Bessie Mashinka.

In 1953, Bessie married Ben Rothstein. Pearl served as her twin sister’s attendant and Temple Emanu El sisterhood hosted the reception.

In addition to raising two children, Bessie devoted most of her life to helping others at the Temple, where she worked for four decades, and through Jewish Women International. Distinguished as a “Quiet Doer” in 1976 by the Jewish Herald Voice, Bessie was proudest of winning two awards: The Babe Green B’nai B’rith Women Leadership Award in 1987 and the Sharon G. Halpin Volunteer of the Year Award in 1997. She also remained in close touch with fellow Home XHKs (Ex Home Kids), who regularly met for reunions in Houston.

Bessie died in 2004 at the age of 88. 

Pearl, who remained single, worked for fifteen years as head cashier of St. Luke’s Episcopal and Texas Children’s Hospitals and the Texas Heart Institute. Pearl’s employer described the job, from which she retired in 1983, as demanding a “high degree of concentration, dedication, accuracy and constant attention to detail.” Her departure was marked with a reception held in the hospitals’ private dining rooms.

Pearl died in 1997, at age 80. Her grave marker was inscribed, “Beloved sister and aunt.” 

Pearl Maas with Sadye Maas Horwitz at their sister Bessie’s wedding, 1953.

Esther, the youngest sibling, remained in the Home until 1935, when she was discharged to her father under the oversight of the Jewish Federation of Houston. Before then, she had been confirmed at Temple Sinai, where she continued her religious studies through high school.

In 1941, after working as a clerk in a Houston department store, Esther married Louis Bleacher, whom she later divorced.

She died in 1997, nine months before her older sister Pearl.