Mildred, Irwin, Florette, & Donald Gordon
In 1924, following the death of his wife, Selma, Robert Gordon admitted his four children to the Home: Mildred (10), Irwin (6), Florette (3), and Donald (18 months). Robert, a native of Russia, worked as a tailor in New Orleans.
While in the Home, Mildred was a member of Temple Sinai’s volley ball team, which in 1928 won the Synagogue Girls’ Volley Ball League Championship. In 1930, after being chosen as one of her high school’s “sponsors” to attend Tulane University’s football game against Southwestern Louisiana Institute, Mildred graduated from Isidore Newman School. She was discharged from the Home in 1931.
In 1945, after her first marriage ended in divorce, Mildred married fellow Home alumnus Max N. Tobias. They lived in a suite in the Roosevelt Hotel where they raised a son and remained for the rest of their lives.
Mildred died in 2000 and was buried next to her husband in New Orleans’s Hebrew Rest Cemetery No. 3.

From left, Irwin, Mildred, Donald, and Florette Gordon, c. 1929. Courtesy of Judge Max Tobias, Jr., son of Home alumni Mildred Gordon and Max Tobias, Sr.
Mildred Gordon, second from left, with Isidore Newman School classmates in dance costumes, 1930. From Louisiana Digital Library.
In Mildred's Words
In 1983, as part of the Home Alumni Project, JCRS Executive Director Viola Weiss interviewed Mildred Gordon Tobias about her time in the Home. Read the summary of Mildred’s recollections here.
During Irwin’s time in the Home, he attended Temple Sinai where he celebrated his confirmation in 1932 and graduated from its religious school in 1935. He studied electronics at Delgado Trade School and was discharged from the Home in 1936.
He married Helene Barnett, raised two children, and owned a radio sales and repair shop on Freret Street in New Orleans. Irwin died in February 2005 at age 86.
While attending Isidore Newman School, Florette performed in several operettas, including a ballet role in 1932 in “The House That Jack Built,” wearing a black dress trimmed with silver crescent moons that she designed in the school’s art department. The same year, she appeared with her younger brother, Donald, in a performance for the Home’s anniversary celebration. Following her discharge from the Home in 1938, she worked as a clerk for the U.S. Maritime Commission. In 1962, after her first marriage ended in divorce, she married fellow Home alumnus Bernard Shanker and moved from Chicago to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
She died in January 2000, just three weeks before her sister, Mildred.
Donald, the youngest of the Gordon siblings, lived in the Home until 1940. While in third grade at Newman School, he represented France in a costumed performance of “Little People of Other Lands,” and the next year joined his sister Florette in the Mother Goose operetta, “The House That Jack Built.” He celebrated his confirmation at Temple Sinai in 1936.
When he registered for the draft in 1940, he stated that he was working at the Home for Sam Kamin, who was married to Home Nurse Anna Levine Kamin. In 1946, he married Roslyn Lepow, with whom he raised two sons. Their marriage ended in divorce.
In his professional life, Donald worked in the pharmaceutical industry, winning election in 1960 as president of the Pharmaceutical Representatives Association of New Orleans. In 1971, at age 48, Donald died by suicide and was buried in Dispersed of Judah Cemetery.


During World War II, Donald Goodman Gordon served in the China Pacific Theater. Photos courtesy of his son, Melvin Gordon.