Weil Siblings: George, Violet, & Pincus

In 1911, Leon Schwarz, on behalf of the B’nai B’rith lodge in Mobile, Alabama, petitioned the Home’s board to admit three Weil siblings: George (12), Violet (7), and Pincus (4). As Schwarz explained, both parents had died. Their father, Rudolph, left no relatives. Although their mother, Adelia, a Catholic who had converted to Judaism upon marrying, left relatives, they were unable to care for the children. Schwarz feared the Catholic authorities would be glad to welcome the Weil children as  “three Jewish conversions or ‘saved souls.'” The board admitted the children.

George remained in the Home until 1915, when he returned to Mobile under the auspices of the B’nai B’rith lodge. George later married Lorena Haas and moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he worked in construction. When George died in 1962,  his WWI service was recognized with military honors.

During Violet’s time in the Home, she served as an officer of the Golden City. She showed a penchant for acting, performing the role of “Anger” in the Home’s 1914 anniversary morality play and “Idleness” in the 1920 pageant conducted by the pupils of the Isidore Newman Manual Training School, from which she graduated later that year. After leaving the Home, Violet worked in New Orleans as a clerk and a seamstress before marrying Dr. Oscar M. Dillen, Sr., an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, with whom she raised a family in Lufkin, Texas. Violet died in 1961 at age 58.

Violet Weil, senior photo, 1920,  Isidore Newman Manual Training School Pioneer.

When Pincus left the Home in 1924 at age 14, he headed to Bay Minette, Alabama, in the care of his eldest married sister, Rosalie, who had not lived in the Home. There he finished high school and became a pharmacist, before earning five battle stars for his World War II service as an Army medical tech. He died in 1986, predeceased by his wife Margaret.

Pincus Weil, n.d. Photo courtesy of Michelle Spiegel, great granddaughter of Pincus’s sister, Violet.