Celia, Max, Sadie, & Yetta Redman

In 1924, Meyer Redman, a peddler, his wife, Rosie, and their six children were living in Houston. Meyer, Rosie, and all but one of the children were natives of Poland. While traveling by automobile to sell his merchandise, Meyer was fatally shot in his back.  His assailants concealed the body and car. The tragic news made headlines in Galveston, Fort Worth, McAllen, Brownsville, and Houston.

One year later, with the recommendation of Houston’s B’nai B’rith Herzl Lodge, Rosie admitted the four youngest children to the Home: Celia (11), Max (9), Sadie (8), and Yetta (2).

While in the Home, Celia played clarinet and cornet, and performed in a musical duet in the 1927 and 1930 anniversary celebrations. She graduated from Joseph Kohn Commercial High School in 1931 before her discharge from the Home, and later worked as a stenographer. In 1940, she lived with fellow Home alumna Naomi Cantor Greenbaum and Naomi’s husband in Athens, Georgia before marrying Eugene Henry Wales, Jr. in 1944. One year later, Celia took her oath of allegiance as a naturalized citizen.

Celia died in 1976 at age 63 and was buried in New Orleans.

Max celebrated his confirmation in 1933 at Temple Sinai, before his discharge from the Home. Three years later he and fellow Home resident Ellis T. Hart led Sabbath services in honor of their graduation from the congregation’s religious high school.  In athletics, he represented Touro Synagogue as a guard on its all star basketball team, and played tennis for “Commy High,” the nickname for S.J. Peters Commercial High School, where Max was a student. 

According to the 1950 census, Max, who remained single, worked as a car salesman in New Orleans. He died in 1965. 

After starting her education at Isidore Newman School, like all other Home children, Sadie transferred to Joseph Kohn Commercial High School for Girls, where she served as a Marshal in the student government. She completed her religious school education at Temple Sinai in 1935, before her discharge from the Home into the care of her mother and older married sister. 

In 1938, Sadie married David Gertler, a lawyer and one-time candidate for mayor who served as Orleans Parish District Court Judge from 1963 to 1969. Together they raised three children. Following the 1965 death from leukemia of their oldest child, Louis, Sadie opened a boutique, whose proceeds went toward leukemia research. In 1968, for her contributions to defeat the disease, Sadie received the Viviane Woodard Community Service Award.

Sadie died in 1999, and was buried in New Orleans alongside her son and husband, who predeceased her. 

Yetta, the youngest Redman sibling, remained in the Home until 1938. In 1933, while in the fifth grade at Newman School, she and her schoolmates, including several Home peers, visited the Item Tribune newspaper plant, making the news while seeing how it got made. She was confirmed in 1936 at Temple Sinai. After her discharge to her mother in New Orleans, she obtained a certificate for stenography from Garner Secretarial School and graduated from Evening School No. 6 for Commercial Studies in 1942. The following year, Yetta, known as Yvonne, married Irving Lakin and moved to Chicago, where they raised two children.

Yvonne Redman Lakin died in 2004 at age 81 and was buried in Chicago’s Beth Sholom Cemetery.