Sara Berenson Stone, 1915-2018

Sara Stone’s influence reached across the New Orleans community as a board member of the New Orleans Community Chest (later the United Way), the Social Welfare Planning Council, the Community Volunteer Service, Kingsley House and the Volunteer Committee at Charity Hospital. Having joined the NCJW board in 1946, and living to be older than 100, Sara Stone also could be considered the oral historian of the organization and especially of the outreach to immigrants. After World War II, at the first meeting of the Jewish Welfare Fund (the funding source for Jewish immigrant settlement), she realized the extent of the Holocaust. She later recalled, “What I heard at that meeting just absolutely blew my brains out. . . . And it really changed the direction of my life.” Stone ran the women’s division of the Jewish Welfare Fund out of her basement and simultaneously assumed the presidency of NCJW during the crucial period of the Port and Dock Program, 1951 to 1952. She, in turn, became mentor to many, including Julanne Isaacson, the first director of Jewish Family Services, and Nancy Timm, who among other positions, succeeded Stone as head of the NCJW Greater New Orleans Scholarship Program.

For another image, see the Flo Schornstein entry.

Sara Berenson Stone: Port and Dock Program