Sam & Lee Hartman

In November 1916, identical twins Sam and Lee Hartman were born to Marcellus Hartman and his wife, the former Marie Feiss, in Greenville, Mississippi. In September 1928, following Marcellus’ death from dysentery, Marie admitted 11-year-old Sam and Lee to the Home, with the endorsement of local B’nai B’rith Lodge President Henry Schall.

Approximately one year later, Marie died of complications from a circulatory condition making Sam and Lee full orphans.

Infant twins Sam and Lee Hartman with their parents, c. 1917. Unless otherwise noted, all photos courtesy of Lydia Hartman Anderson, Sam’s daughter.

Within their first week at the Home, the boys underwent the Home’s routine medical examinations, which then included an IQ test, the results of which are reported in this letter from Dr. C.S. Holbrook at Touro Infirmary. Courtesy of Lydia Hartman Anderson, Sam’s daughter.

After entering Newman School in the sixth grade, the brothers immersing themselves in academics many of the same sports and other extracurricular activities. While they were both in the band, Lee also played in the orchestra, winning prizes for solo tuba in the 1932 and 1933 citywide contests. Though both worked on the board of the school’s Pioneer literary magazine, Sam won the prize for best editorial in 1934.

Sam kept photos of Newman School classmates and faculty, some of which are displayed below. 

Lee Hartman, Isidore Newman School Pioneer, 1934. Sam was missing from the class photo.

Newman Headmaster Clarence C. Henson, 1934.

Walter Allee, Newman Science teacher, 1934.

Eddie Kalin, Newman Math teacher, 1934, and future principal.

Adele Karp, fellow Home resident and Newman classmate, 1934.

Joe Samuels, fellow Home resident and Newman classmate, 1934.

After their discharge from the Home in 1934, Lee and Sam attended Louisiana State University. While at LSU, they joined ROTC and were members of Huey Long’s beloved LSU Tigers Marching Band, in which Lee continued to play the tuba. Sam played the french horn.

They both earned their medical degrees from LSU Medical School in New Orleans, during which time Sam returned to the Home to work as counselor in exchange for room and board.

In 1936, Lee married Nona Cook, and raised three children. In 1942, Sam married Margaret Alston and raised four children. 

During World War II, Lee and Sam served as Army medics. Lee was stationed in India in the Army Air Corps as a flight surgeon. Sam was in England with the Army Air Force 96th Bomb Group. According to his daughter, Sam participated in bombing raids over Germany as well as Operation “Chow Hound” that dropped food over Holland during the last week of the war. His citations included the Air Medal, Europe-Africa-Middle East Campaign ribbon with six battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation with oak leaf cluster.

In 2017, Austin-born journalist Ben Hartman chronicled the last few years of the medical career of his late grandfather, Dr. Lee Hartman, who served as a resident physician and psychiatrist at the Wynne Unit, a men’s prison in Huntsville, Texas . The article was entitled, “My grandfather was a death row doctor. He tested psychedelic drugs on Texas inmates,” Texas Tribune, July 5, 2017.  Lee died in 1964 at age 48. As Ben recounts, on Lee’s headstone in Austin are four simple words, “Scholar and compassionate healer.” Although Lee’s obituary in the April 1964 Journal of the American Medical Association attributes his death to “acute myocardial failure,” Ben writes that Lee’s death certificates lists the cause of death as “barbiturate poisoning…decedent took an overdose of pentobarbital.” Ben also found his grandfather’s diary, in which the doctor wrote in 1962, “The death penalty is irreparable.”

After retiring as a Captain from the Army Air Force, Sam practiced general medicine in small towns in Louisiana before joining his brother’s established medical practice in Beaumont, Texas. He later opened his own private general medical practice, completing forty years before his retirement in 1991. Dr. Sam Hartman died in 2009 at age 92.

Sam Hartman’s 1986 letter to fellow Home alumnus Bessie Margolin, in which he wrote about his recollections of Bessie’s siblings, Dora and Jack. Courtesy of Malcolm Trifon, Bessie’s nephew.