Women – Wise and Otherwise

MRS. RANDOLPH GUGGENHEIMER, Editor

It was a very charming, dark-haired woman who received a Bulletin reporter at the Hotel Pierre yesterday to tell of her activity in charitable work. She spoke, vivaciously, reeling off names like the Irvington House, the Vocational Adjustment Bureau, Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies, Mount Sinai Hospital, Physicians’ Emergency Aid with a rapidity born of familiarity and interest.

The woman was Mrs. Fred H. Greenebaum. Her interest in the organizations she named can be attested by the single fact that she is chairman of the entertainment committee, vice-president, former assistant treasurer, former chairman of the membership committee, and member of the executive board, all of a single organization, the Irvington House, at Irvington-on-Hudson.

When she speaks of the House, her face lights up and she goes into detail, describing every phase, every crisis in its history.

Mrs. Greenebaum told the Bulletin reporter how the House started in Mineola fourteen years ago as a place for cardiac children to stay during vacations, how the idea succeeded so well that it was decided to have a winter home, how money was raised and a membership drive was begun and appeals went out, and how, finally, property was bought and a real home was begun, with eighty children cared for. And Mrs. Greencbaum radiated victory as she told of the triumph.

But the triumph was short-lived. Four years ago, the House burned down to the ground. All of the children were saved from the fire. From homes, from the fashionable Westchester country clubs, everywhere, aid was offered, and the children were cared for while a temporary home was being found for them.

And now a new Irvington House with accommodations for 150 small heart sufferers has been built.