Miller Siblings: Etta, Annie, Sarah, and Leon
Alter Miller, a native of Lithuania, and his wife, the former Fannie Mina Wolper, lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, where they were raising their four children: Etta, Annie, Leon, and Sarah. In 1918, following his wife’s hospitalization for mental illness, Alter admitted the two youngest children, one-year-old Sarah and three-year-old Leon, to the Home. The next year, he placed Annie (6) and Etta (9) with their younger siblings.
After starting her education at Isidore Newman School, Etta transferred to Francis T. Nicholls Industrial School for Girls. She was discharged from the Home in 1927, and returned to Shreveport where she kept house for her father. In 1938, she married Odra J. Naquin, with whom she had three children. After a divorce, Etta married Charles Hoppe and moved to Barstow, California. In 2002, Etta died at age 92.
Annie remained in the Home until 1929, when she joined Etta and their father in Shreveport. Annie married Loranzo T. Gregory with whom she lived at Camp Hood in Texas where he was stationed while in the army in 1950. They later settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she died in 1985.
Etta Miller, with wavy dark hair in middle of the back row (as identified by her niece, Toby Miller Sherman), joins fellow Home kids on July 4, 1924. Photo courtesy JCRS.
Sarah, who was known as Sally, lived in the Home until 1933, following her confirmation at Congregation Gates of Prayer. In 1941, after having returned to Shreveport, she married James Edwin Embry, in a ceremony at the First Baptist Church attended by her father and three siblings. The couple, who raised two sons, lived briefly in Malvern, Arkansas and then several towns in Louisiana and Texas before moving to Bartlesville and then Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she volunteered for several charitable organizations.
At age 83, Sally died in 2000.
Jewish Orphans’ Home nursery, c. 1921. Courtesy of Britt Embry, son of Home alumna Sarah (“Sally”) Miller Embry, and Toby Miller Sherman, daughter of Home alumni spouses, Leon Miller and Pauline Berebes Miller. Toby believes that the little girl kneeling on the bed is her aunt Sally.
Sarah “Sally” Miller, front row, second from right, celebrated her confirmation at Congregation Gates of Prayer in 1933 with Rabbi Mendel Silver officiating. Other Home children in the confirmation class were Rose Sherman, front row, far left, and Joe Samuels, in glasses, directly above/behind Sally. Photo courtesy of Britt Embry, Sally’s son.
During Leon’s time in the Home, he was a member of the Home’s Boy Scout Troop, with whom he spent time at Camp Salmen in Slidell, Louisiana. At Isidore Newman School, from which he graduated in 1933, he was a star basketball player who regularly received praise on the pages of the local newspapers. After graduation, he returned with his sister Sally to their father and siblings in Shreveport, where he soon started a career in retail jewelry sales and in 1941 married fellow Home alumnus Pauline “Polly” Berebes.
Leon Miller, Isidore Newman School Pioneer, 1933.
Two of several photos of Leon Miller that appeared on New Orleans’s sports pages lauding his basketball prowess. Top, “Scoring Ace,” New Orleans Item, Jan. 23, 1933; above, “Leon Miller is a star forward,” Times-Picayune, Feb. 26, 1933.
After serving in the Army as staff sergeant during World War II, Leon and Polly ultimately made their home in Houston, Texas, where he worked as store manager for Gordon’s Jewelers and they raised four children. When Leon died in 2005, his family requested that his memory be honored by donations to the Home’s successor, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service.
Leon Miller, cemetery marker, Emanu El Memorial Park, Houston, Texas. From Find A Grave.
Leon Miller, second from left, served for many years as store manager for Gordon’s Jewelers. Houston Chronicle, October 8, 1975.