Louis Silverstein

Louis Silverstein (Labe ben Dov & Sarah) 7/7/18-7/13/2000 (Age: 82) First generation American born in Harlem and raised in Brooklyn, the youngest of five siblings, Louis graduated from Long Island University and was drafted in July, 1941 from Brooklyn Law School to serve in WWII as a combat infantryman with the U.S. Army, 47th Infantry, 9th Div. He married his high school sweetheart, Mildred, May 19, 1942 and their picture appeared in the October 12, 1942 issue of Life Magazine. Awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in N. Africa, he crossed to Italy where he was wounded and sent home at War’s end. Completing his J.D., he went on to raise three sons and retired as a Nassau County Probation Officer moving from Plainview, NY to Tamarac, FL coming to rest in peace in New Montifore Cemetery, Pinelawn, NY. Louis avoided the spotlight, preferring to work behind the scenes. He was a founding member of the Bethpage Jewish Community Center and served on committees while his sons were Boy Scouts. Until his children left for colleges, he worked six days a week to meet their needs. He was very close to his wife’s family and constantly stayed in touch with his nieces and nephews. A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, Louis always put family first. As a youth, he was a strong ocean swimmer and used to lead horseback riding excursions from the Prospect Park Riding Stables down Ocean Parkway to the Atlantic beaches. He excelled at handball and later enjoyed playing tennis socially. His greatest pleasure, other than seeing his family, was dancing with his wife.

Louis L Silverstein on Ancestry.com (Ross Fried / Sylvester-Fried Family Tree), 1918–2000

• BIRTH 7 JUL 1918 • Manhattan NE, New York
• DEATH 13 JUL 2000 • Fort Lauderdale, Broward, Florida, USA

1930 U.S. Census

• Louis Silverstein
• birth: ca. 1919 New York
• census: 1930 Brooklyn (Districts 0501-​0750),​ Kings,​ New York
• parents: Barnett Silverstein,​ Sophie Silverstein

Louis Silverstein in United States World War II Army Enlistment Records:

• Name (Original) SILVERSTEIN LOUIS
• Event Type Military Service
• Event Date (enlistment) 23 Jul 1941
• Event Place Cp Upton, Yaphank, New York, United States
• Birth Year 1918
• Birthplace NEW YORK
• Education Level 4 years of college
• Civilian Occupation: Actors and actresses
• Marital Status Single, without dependents
• Military Rank Private
• Army Branch Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
• Army Component Selectees (Enlisted Men)
• Source Reference Civil Life

Louis married Mildred ABRAMS b: 1919. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=byfield1&...

Children:

• Alan Jay Silverstein June 1946
• Barnett Silverstein ~1949

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Louis Silverstein graduated from Long Island University, then went to Brooklyn Law School (located on Pearl Street in Manhattan at the time). He was drafted out of his third (final) year into the U.S. Army (1941). Shortly after he was drafted, he married his high school girlfriend, Mildred Esther Abrams. Notwithstanding his education and the promise to shortly be pulled from his unit to either attend Officer Candidate School or be an instructor, he was shipped-out with his unit overseas for the invasion of N. Africa as part of an anti-tank gun unit. He was the only member of that gun unit to make it ashore alive, where he was handed a rifle and told he was now in the infantry.

Upon returning from WW II, he finished his third year at Brooklyn Law School, and as he was a GI, the NY State Bar Exam requirements were waived and he was admitted to the practice of law. His first job, clerking for a law firm paid him $5/week, insufficient for him to support his wife and first child, Alan Jay. So he accepted his brother Jack’s invitation to move out to California. There he worked for Jack, helping to run a clothing factory and building, living in, and managing (along with Mildred) a motel project of Jack's. But Millie, pregnant at the time (~1950) was homesick, and as soon as her baby was born, the family left California with Mildred flying East with her 4-year-old and new baby, and Louis driving. They moved into maternal grandparents' two-family home on Ashford Street in Brooklyn. Louis got a job as a bookkeeper for a taxi cab fleet. He stayed in that job until I was in college when he was let go so the owner’s nephew could take his position. About 1969 Louis got a job as a Nassau County Probation Officer from which he retired upon reaching age 65. After that, for the next five or so years, they spent winters in Kings Point, Tamarac, Florida and Summers in Plainview, NY. Then they sold the house in Plainview and moved full-time to Kings Point, Florida.

Louis Silverstein (Labe ben Dov & Sarah)
7/7/18-7/13/2000 (Age: 82)

(SS # = 080-24-4413) Interment #: M123603 at New Montifore Cemetery, Pinelawn, NY, Boro Friendship League, Block 17, Section 3, row 12: grave 2L Last address: 9947 North Belfort Circle D-4, Tamarac, FL 33321 (954-726-8702)

Louis was the baby of his family, born 5th to Sophie and Barnet Silverstein. Barnet owned and operated the news/candy concession in the entrance lobby of the New York Stock Exchange Building. As such, comparatively speaking, the family was middle class and well off. The older siblings to Louis were: Jack, Eva, Julius, and Francis. Jack graduated from Brooklyn Law School. He owned the Brooklyn Prospect Park Riding Stable. Louis led trail rides from the stable down Ocean Parkway to the beach at Coney Island. Jack got involved in shady dealings and was about to be disbarred. So, he moved to California and changed his name to Sylvester. There Jack owned a garment factory and became active as a builder, constructing the Hollywood Hotel and Motel, buying real estate, and putting up several tracts of single family homes, becoming a multi-millionaire in the process. Eva was purportedly a beauty and married a lawyer, Alex Cymrot, who specialized in the new tax laws, argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and got involved in commodity trading. He and Eva also became extremely wealthy (millionaires each in their own right). Julius graduated with a law degree from Columbia University’s law school. Story goes that Barnet, unbeknownst to Sophie, invested heavily in the stock market based on tips he heard from his customers and lost everything in the great crash of 1929. Sophie stopped talking to him. So if the seven of them where eating dinner at the table together and Sophie wanted something, she would say, “Eva, tell your father to pass the salt,” never addressing the man directly again. Upon his law school graduation, purportedly the first thing Julius did was go to Barnet and tell him he’d file for him to divorce Sophie. Barnet is said to have smacked Julius telling him that he loved his mother and would never divorce her and to never say such a stupid thing again. Barnett died of heart failure before he was sixty. Julius served as a U.S. Army Captain through WWII, stationed in Miami Beach, working for the predecessor of the CIA, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). After the war, Julius got a job working for the GSA (General Services Administration) of the federal government in Washington, D.C. where he stayed his entire career rising to the highest civil service level within the agency and being its head, general counsel. He is mentioned several times in the Congressional Record and invented and was the author of the indexing of the U.S. Code as well as author of the leading legal texts regarding Government Contracting. He married an intensely intelligent woman. His only vices were that he chain smoked and played tennis from his college days onwards. He used to be the high chair net umpire at the professional tennis matches when the pro tennis circuit was in D.C. He was amongst the chosen public employees to be present in the White House Rose Garden upon the formal state visit of Golda Meyer as prime minister of Israel. He and his wife, because of their great intellect, were advised not to have children as they would never be able to tolerate their own offspring being not up to par with their own intellectual accomplishments. They adopted their son, Andrew and lived a modest life-style and died a millionaire. Fran married a jeweler, Fred Kramer who with his brother, owned and operated a jewelry booth in the Diamond Exchange on 47th Street. He and Fran also died millionaires. But their daughter Susan was into drugs and booze, and their son Barry died sick and alone in their home in Oceanside, NY. Louis owned his own car. He was a very strong swimmer and would swim in the surf off Coney Island Beach for several miles parallel to the shore. He dated Millie as part of a group through high school in Brooklyn. Later, they would attend the polo matches at Bethpage State Park both while he was an undergraduate student at Long Island University and later while he was a student at Brooklyn Law School which at the time he attended was located in Manhattan. During his third (senior) year at Brooklyn Law School (Pearl St., NYC), just after turning 23 on July 7, 1941, Louis was drafted into the U.S. Army on July 22, 1941. At that time he was still living at home with his family at 693 Cleveland Street, Brooklyn, NY. He was then 5’4½” and weighed 142 pounds. He was drafted from Kings County local Selective Service Board # 230 and entered into the army at Camp Upton, NY.

7/7/18 born, NY, NY 4 years at Long Island University 2 years at Brooklyn Law School 7/22/41 inducted into Army at Camp Upton, NY – Army serial # 32 161 700 8/41 Combat Infantryman (Rifleman 745) Rifle M1 MKM 152 1/31/42 Fort Bragg, NC Infantry Regimental Intelligence School to May’42 5/19/42 married 10/19/42 shipped out to ATO (African Theatre Operations) arriving 11/8/42 Algeria, French Morocco, Tunisia 11/8/42 bronze star action hand to hand combat vs Zulus 2/4/44 authorized Bronze Star Medal 1 Bronze Arrowhead and 3 Bronze clusters awarded 7/25/52 5/13/44 shipped to MTO (Mediterranean Theatre Operations) arriving 5/16/44 Rome-Arno 2/27/45 shipped to USA arriving 3/12/45 8/20/45 separated Fort Dix, NJ

While doing his basic training, Louis got into the best physical shape of his life. He later attributed that to saving his life as he retreated with the American Army across the desert sands of North Africa before the advancing Panzer Tank columns of Rommel. While stationed in the South during training, apparently Louis volunteered for nothing and gambled. He pulled an overnight for guard duty once and while at his night post observed two eyes staring out of the dark at him. When he got no response to the night’s password, he aimed and fired his M-1. The morning patrol discovered a cat shot between its eyes. Louis and Mildred appeared in a photo together in Life Magazine at the time, noting that the young married couple lived adjacent to the military base where Louis was undergoing training. Because of his education, Louis had been assured that he’d be reassigned as soon as basic training was completed to being an instructor and would not be shipped overseas. However, as soon as his training was finished, he along with his entire unit was immediately shipped to North Africa where he was with the first wave to hit the beach in the invasion of North Africa. Louis described that first combat mission. He said that an armada of American war and troop ships approached the coast of North Africa in a dense fog, totally undetected by the Germans, who were caught sleeping with their guard down. The first wave of American men to go over the side and climb down cargo nets to reach the landing craft was told to wait. On orders of President Roosevelt, the ships’ loudspeaker systems were used to wake the Germans and give them three hours within which to surrender. For three hours, the men waited on deck. After three hours, during which time the Germans moved men and equipment into position and refortified their positions, the ships began an intense thirty minute bombardment of the coast. Towards the end of those thirty minutes, having now lost the element of surprise, the invasion began. Louis was one of a three or four man team manning an anti-tank gun mounted on a half-track. During the landing, the other men in his anti-tank gun crew were killed and the gun itself got submerged and sank. Making it to shore, Louis was handed a dead soldier’s rifle and was told, “You’re in the infantry now.” And so he remained through the entire war, going in and coming out a private. Louis described three events that he lived through during the war in North Africa. First, he said that the most feared sound was that of howling German dive bombers swooping low to release bombs onto American troops. The troops would hear the howling and run, scattering and diving into trenches and fox holes previously dug. The dropped bombs would fall and hit, blowing up men and equipment wherever they hit. Blood and body parts would be blown up into the air with bomb craters being formed within yards of the lucky ones who survived. Second, he related how shortly after their successful but costly landing, the American advance was stopped in its tracks and actually began to be pushed back by Rommel. Louis said that but for the great physical shape that basic training produced for him, he would never have been able to keep up with the long, forced, foot retreat before the German tank force advances. Those troops that were not able to keep up with the retreat were over run and killed by the advancing German Army and tank corps. Louis also related how at one battle, American ground troops, himself included, were over-run by French Vichy Zulu warriors ill equipped with French WWI rifles that had straight, fixed bayonets. He described how these Zulu warriors were physically very tall and fierce fighters who rushed the American positions overrunning the Americans. Although the M-1s the U.S. troops had were far superior weapons to what the Zulus had, the Zulus overran the Americans and ended up in a hand to hand combat situation where the Americans could not fire their weapons because of fear of hitting their own men. The Americans prevailed because their bayonets were double sided and could slash and plunge whereas the fixed bayonets of the Zulus could only pierce and not slash. Louis received superficial lacerations during this hand to hand combat. After the North African campaign, Louis was shipped across the Mediterranean to Italy. There, he was assigned to drive a jeep from the supply quartermasters with ammunition to the front lines where he was to unload the ammunitions and pick-up wounded troops on stretchers and drive them back behind the American lines to field hospitals. These solitary jeep trips bringing ammunition to the troops at the front lines were done at night without lights to avoid detection by the enemy. On one return trip, the jeep hit a land mine and flipped over. The jeep ended up upside down partly covering Louis. The morning patrol found him, barely alive, the only survivor of the mine. Louis came to and discovered that his broken body had been wired back together at a field hospital from where he was then sent for rest and recovery to a regular hospital. While there, he ate pork for the first time in his life. He described how that came about; He was given a tray of food on which there was a whitish meat that he did not recognize. When he asked what it was and was told pork, he refused to eat it. The doctors inquired why, and he told them because he was Jewish, he would not eat pork. An army chaplain (Christian) was sent to his bedside and told Louis that under Jewish law, because Jews believe that their religious laws are laws to live by and not die by, he must consume the otherwise forbidden food because it was the only protein available and without it he would die.

 At the hospital, he was told that the war was over for him and that he’d be shipped back home.  Fearing to return wounded to his bride, he refused to return stateside.  The Army then assigned him to mail sorting and delivery while he continued to recover from his wounds.  No Purple Heart was awarded because his wounds were received while leaving the front lines and returning to behind the lines, rather than while going to the front engaged directly with the enemy.   After the cessation of hostilities, on the long sea passage back stateside following the end of the war, Louis gambled on ship and got off the ship with a lot of money.  He lost it all betting the ponies at the race track.  Upon his return, Louis had to repeat and finish his third and final year at Brooklyn Law School.  He did not have to take the NY Bar Exam because he explained that it was waived for veterans.  He did not stay very long at his first law job clerking for a law firm because he felt that he could not make ends meet on the $5/week salary he received.  He was already living with his in-laws on Ashford Street at the time with his wife and first child, Alan Jay. Jack offered Louis a position as his assistant in California.  So Louis drove his wife and child cross country.  There, he assisted Jack in running a garment factory while Millie ran the motel where she lived with Louis and Alan.  Millie was very lonely for her family.  Louis had expectations that Jack would give him the factory or set him up in a business.  During this time, Barnett was conceived.  As Louis’ expectations were not met and Millie missed her family back East, as soon as Barnett was born, the family of four moved back to Brooklyn, NY.   Louis put Mildred with their two sons on an unscheduled mail plane and he began to drive back to the East Coast from California.  Millie described the flight as barnstorming eastward across America.  People with flags would go out along the route and wave for the plane to land to pick-up mail if they had any.  The plane would land for the mail and take off again continuing its journey east.  Mildred phoned her family along the route during several of the landings.  When her family found out that she was on an unscheduled flight, they wired money ahead so she was able to get on a regularly scheduled passenger plane.  Louis arrived and the family again was taken in by Mildred’s family.  Louis got a job as a bookkeeper for a taxi cab fleet owned by a fellow named Haight located at 42nd Street and Eleventh Avenue. He worked 5 and ½ days/week.  By then the family had grown to include all three sons: Alan Jay, Barnett and Jeffrey.  The family then lived in a ground floor apartment in Glen Oaks, Queens.  It was there that Barnett started kindergarten with a black teacher.  Half way through Barnett’s kindergarten, the family moved to 14 Barby Lane, Bethpage, L.I., N.Y.  Nassau County in the early 1950’s had extensive potato farms.  One such farmer, Gerhardt, sold some of his acreage to a developer who established the Bethpage suburbs.  Millie and Louis had been going out weekends trying to find a house to purchase, but could not find anything they could afford.  Upon seeing the house they eventually purchased, Millie had walked through the first floor level consisting of the living room, kitchen, and dining room and then had returned to their car parked out at the curb.  Louis had gone through the house thoroughly from basement through attic and everything in between.  Upon learning that he could purchase the house with his GI benefits and only put done $10 cash, he immediately did so.  He then went outside and approached the front passenger side of their car.  Millie rolled down her window and Louis kissed her saying, we just bought this house!  Millie was happy and excited and ran back into the house to finish looking at the basement, rumpus room and bedroom floor.