Louis and Robert (Harold) Albert

In May 1927, Louis Albert was almost 10 years old when his mother, Hattie Horn Albert, gave birth to his brother, Harold. According to the death certificate, Hattie died three hours after delivery. In September 1928, Dr. Sydney Albert, an optometrist, admitted his sons to the Home from Nashville, Tennessee.

The boys lived in the Home for three years, when they were discharged to the father, who had remarried and was living in California. While in the Home, Louis corresponded regularly with his father. In one letter, Louis – apparently in response to his father’s offer of a saxophone — wrote that he wanted a “small B-flat soprano sax,” preferring the Buescher brand over the Conn. After noting that his baby brother, Harold (then 2 1/2 years old) was “fine” and “plays a drum,” Louis described a recent outing with his volunteer Big Sister, Mrs. B. Isaacs, during which she treated him to lunch and a show. About Isaacs, Louis added, “She’s a peach. Their [sic] very rich.” 

Following in his father’s career path, Louis went on to attend the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis. In 1943, he married Norma Lee Westerman and the couple made their home in San Marcos, Texas, where Louis was then stationed with the Army Air Corps. They later moved to McAllen and raised three children. According to his daughter, Sharon Albert Brier, Louis he went into business with his father-in-law and eventually owned stores named McRey’s and Louis Albert’s. He started a program that tested and provided eyeglasses to McAllen public school students.

Louis died in 1996 at age 79.

Harold, who became known as Robert, later recalled feeling very differently from Louis about their time in the Home. As Robert wrote in recollections shared by his niece, Marsha Albert Wolff, “[Louis] always saw it as a wonderful place and I thought it was a dry run for Dachau. When I remembered it, it was very painful.” At the same time, Robert shared positive memories about Louis in the Home, including a time that Louis stepped in to defend him from being bullied and how Louis always acted proudly to have a little brother.

Robert went on to receive his BA from Vanderbilt University, and advanced degrees in psychology from the University of Texas (MA) and Boston University (PhD), with clinical training at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Harvard University Medical School. He served as assistant professor of psychology at Emory University and Skidmore College before joining the faculty at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, from which he retired and then served as professor of psychology emeritus. He spent most of his career researching and writing about the exceptional giftedness in children and the achievement of eminence. 

In 1962, he married Julie Maehling, a psychiatric social worker. They raised two sons.

Robert died in 2011 at age 84.

Despite the pain with which Robert said he remembered his time in the Home, he also expressed gratitude. In 1982, when JCRS Executive Director Viola Weiss was undertaking the Home Alumni Interview Project, she asked Robert for his advice. The project was a “wonderful effort,” he wrote. “People are far less sensitive to their pasts than years ago, even when there was pain during them.” He added, “But you must remember, as with me and my brother Louis, the Home was a cove of hope and care, and that, I am sure is still recalled or should be.” He believed that many alumni would be responsive to her efforts to keep the earlier connection alive. He enclosed a donation, writing that he was happy to support the Home. “I wish it were more!”