From the author............

Twas the blizzard of 1947, around Chanukah, 10 young boys from the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers,NY, came for a holiday dinner at the home of a very generous lady who lived in my apartment house in the Fleetwood Section of Mount Vernon, NY. Blowing winds caused large drifts, and soon their bus was stuck in a snowbank, preventing them from going back to the Home. What to do!

Being quite young myself, and the same age as these boys, I was called upon to help find different places in the building for them to spend the night. I remember racing up and down the stairs, not waiting for the elevator, to find each boy a place to sleep. Completing my job, one of the boys by the name of Heshy, spent the night at our apartment, and I recall sharing some of my gifts with him.

The next day, the bus still unmovable, though the sun shown brightly, there was nothing planned for all these boys to do. With my parents permission, I took them all to the Parkway movie theater on Gramatan Ave to see a movie, though I cannot recall its name. By the time the movie was over, their bus was ready to leave and off they all went. I did speak to Heshy again several times on the telephone, but never saw him again.

Onward to the winter of 1958 and I was now married, my husband and I went to the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers to buy him a pair of leather gloves. The gentleman behind the counter, staring as if he had seen a ghost, could not keep his eyes off my husband...and when we paid for the gloves, and he signed the check, the gentleman was in great shock. He noted the name Soloff on the check. Unbeknownst to me at the moment, was that my husband's father, Jacob "Jack" Soloff and some of his siblings had been at HNOH many years before I was born, and this gentleman, who waited on us, had been best friends with my husband's uncle, David "Donny" Soloff, who had died in 1935 at the age of 26. I guess my husband resembled him immensely.

Sadly over the many years, my father-in-law would not speak about his childhood nor his parents. The information he gave about his stay at HNOH was very sparse and through the years, left many questions unanswered.

Now it's 1997, I have been married almost 40 years, still very young, though, and in the last few years, I started to delve into Genealogy. In search of my husband's father's roots and not finding any information at all past his birth, I began searching the internet for anything about HNOH. I found a Brother, by the name of Sam Myers, who is now in the state of Oregon, and we began corresponding by email and instant messages.

After several months, I was able to find the JCCA (Jewish Child Care Association), in New York City. Within weeks, we found out quite a bit about my father-in-law, his parents, and even the place where my husband's grandparents, whom he never met, came from. All this with the encouragement of Sam Myers, who told me not to give up this search when the information at first did not seem to be coming. And through Sam Myers, I met through correspondence another wonderful gentlemen by the name of Charles "Chick" Baker, whose poem appears on the Memorial Page. Chick has filled us in on the story of the uncle who died so young.

Then a wonderful video arrived one day, from Sam, called "Our Childhood....Remembered", put together by Ed Lippman and other Brothers from photos and home movies over the years. Filled with stories and commentaries of their memories, I shed quite a few tears and some laughter while watching. Really, I think, this video should be put on television for all the world to see.

Well, to make a very long story short, I decided as a gift of my love and devotion to all the new friends I met, to make this web site to perpetuate the History and Memories of the Brothers of the Hebrew National Orphan Home. I hope you will find it filled with information, that might even help you find who you are searching for.