Mayor James J. Walker, Lieut -Gov. Herbert H. Lehman and Dr. Stephen S. Wise paid glowing tribute to the late Sophie Irene Loeb, author and social welfare worker, at the funeral services held Sunday at the Free Synagogue House, New York.
The speakers had been associated with Miss Loeb in her endeavors for the welfare of dependent children and widows.
“Her charity was different from all others. For it was not only the giving of alms, but the giving of opportunities,” declared Lieut.-Gov. Lehman. “I, from long association with her, had an opportunity to know her courage, her unending sympathy and ability to work against all obstacles. She had many interests and accomplished much, because she never knew the meaning of the word fail.
“Her overwhelming interest was the care and the health of the independent child. Her work tore down walls and inhibitions and set up instead a mother’s love and an opportunity for the child to grow up under the conditions under which he would have to live as an adult. Her philosophy of child care will endure beyond the lives of all of us. By carrying on the cause to which she dedicated her life, we may hope to keep fresh and green the memory of Sophie Irene Loeb.” he concluded.
“The Mayor of the City of New York is much poorer in the passing of Sophie Irene Loeb,” said Mayor Walker. “It is for that city I would utter a word, coming more from the heart than the mind, as coming from the thousands of widows and orphans who have known her beneficence.
“In fifty years, Sophie Irene Loeb made a contribution to humanity not matched by centuries of living. Thousands of children, orphans, found in her a substitute seldom offered in the history of mankind. To despairing hearts she brought sweetness, freshness, hope. Ours is a finer, better, more wonderful commonwealth because of her. And the nation as well as the city and state have reaped the benefits of that vision which first saw its fruits in New York. Her influence cannot be replaced. A monument will be builded for her, not necessarily of granite, but into the hearts of thousands of littles ones and will be handed down from mother to child in succeeding generations.”
Dr. Wise, who officiated, said: “Since the representatives of both the city and state have already expressed the community sense of indebtedness to the leadership in well-doing of Sophie Irene Loeb, it is not needful for me to do more than point out the source of her idealism and her inspiration. Since her birth in Russia half a century ago, her life was rooted in the Jewish home, and she was an utterly loyal daughter of her people, although in her dreams and in her deeds she (Continued on Page 4)
recognized no barrier of race or creed.
“Out of the great Jewish tradition in which she was nurtured she derived her sense of the sanctity of the rights alike of motherhood and of childhood. It was her derivation from the ancient ideals of her people that caused her to be satisfied with nothing less than justice as the only solvent of all social problem.”
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