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Westchester Einsteins Deny Naval Academy Officers Advised Son to Change Name

June 16, 1939
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Mrs. Jay Allen Einstein, whose family yesterday received Westchester County Court permission to adopt the name of Easton because the present name was “distinctly German and Semitic,” told the J.T.A. today that her husband is Jewish but she is not.

Mrs. Einstein termed “ridiculous” reports that her husband’s petition to the court had said that one of their two sons had been advised by “his superior officers” at the United States Naval Academy to change his name. “I don’t know where they got that,” she said. “We had been intending all our life to change our name.”

Annapolis dispatches said the office of Rear Admiral Wilson Brown, superintendent of the Naval Academy, announced an investigation of reports that Midshipman Einstein’s superior had advised him to change his name to avoid the handicap of a Jewish surname.

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