Milton Jack Liberman

In 1926, following the death of his mother, the former Sadie Kleinman, one-year-old Milton Liberman went to live with his aunt and uncle, Ida and Ben Harris, in Dallas, Texas. Four years later, Milton’s father, Joseph Liberman, admitted the boy to the Home in New Orleans.

Reflecting the Home’s liberal policy of allowing summer visits with relatives, Milton left the institution on at least two occasions to return to Dallas by train to celebrate his birthday with his aunt and uncle. During one such visit in July 1932, Milton (apparently with his aunt’s help) wrote Superintendent Harry Ginsburg to report that he was “having a good time” shooting “fireworks with my cousin Gladys” and “playing with my old toys.” He finished his letter by asking Ginsburg to “tell everyone at the Home hello for me.”

Milton remained in the Home until 1943, when he graduated from Isidore Newman School. While there, Milton won a prize for excellence in biology and performed a leading role in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, “Iolanthe.” The next year, while attending college at LSU in Baton Rouge, Milton was called for military duty and served at the Naval Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia.

In 1951, Milton married Dorothy Evelyn Brown. One year later, the couple celebrated both the birth of a son and Milton’s graduation from LSU Medical School. Milton later served as medical director for the Tuberculosis Annex at Charity Hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, before moving to Florida where he practiced internal medicine.

After Milton’s marriage to Dorothy ended in divorce, he remarried several times, all of which met the same fate, while producing three additional children.

Milton Jack Liberman died in 1985 at age 59. According to the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, Georgia, Milton suffered “an apparently self-inflicted bullet wound.” His daughter reported that he had been depressed after a paralyzing stroke in 1982 and later heart attacks.