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People
Abravanel, Don Isaac
Berg, Gertude (Molly Goldberg)
Berg, Moe
Berle, Milton
Berlin, Irving
Bernstein, Leonard
Brandeis, Louis D.
Cardozo, Benjamin
Einstein, Albert
Elion, Gertrude
Frankel,Jacob
Gershwin, George
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader
Gompers, Samuel
Goode, Alexander
Goodman, Benny
Gratz, Rebecca
Greenberg, Hank
Hillman, Sidney
Hoffman, Jeffrey
Houdini, Harry
Jefferson, Thomas
Karpeles , Leopold
Lamarr, Hedy
Lazarus, Emma
Lehman, Herbert H.
Levy, Asser
Levy, Uriah P.
Magnes, Judah L.
Meir, Golda
Miller, Arthur
Myerson, Bess
Noah, Mordecai.
Ochs, Adolph
Pulitzer, Joseph
Resnik, Judith
Rose, Ernestine
Rosenthal, Robert
Ross, Barney

Salk, Jonas
Salomon, Haym
Santangel, Luis de
Sarnoff, David
Schick, Bela
Seixas, Gershom M.
Singer, Isaac B.
Stern, Isaac
Straus, Isidor & Ida
Strauss, Levi
Streisand, Barbra
Szold, Henrietta
Torres, Dara
Torres, Luis de
Touro, Judah

Wacks, Mel

Wald, Lillian

Washington, George
Wiesel, Elie
Wise, Isaac Mayer
Zacuto, Abraham

Lt. Col. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal Medal designed by Jim Licaretz
Medal by Virginia Janssen (2007), Lillian Wald, Founder of Visiting Nurse Service

Lillian Wald (1867-1940)

Lillian Wald was one of the most influential women in the 19th century. She became a legend to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who streamed to the shores of the United States in the late 1890's and early 1900's

She wanted to enter Medical School, but instead enrolled at New York Hospital's School of Nursing. Later, Ms. Wald recruited another nurse, Mary Brewster, and they made themselves available to anyone who needed help. They charged very little for their services and gave freely to those who could not afford to pay. Many times they would spend the night with a sick patient, and they would often fetch surgeons to come when a patient was too ill to be moved.

In 1893, Wald and Brewster created the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service, which became the major model for visiting nursing in the United States. Their headquarters at 265 Henry Street became the Henry Street Settlement House. In 1898, they had a staff of eleven full time workers, nine of them nurses, and by 1916 there were more than one hundred nurses.

Lillian Wald persuaded the city to begin a program of public nursing and the Board of Education to put nurses into the public schools. She spoke out against the popular movement to restrict the immigrants, viewing the immigrants' culture as a valuable contribution to the American way of life. Ms. Wald was appointed to several government committees, and also found time to help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She labored for better conditions for pregnant workers and to abolish child labor.

The Henry Street Settlement still stands on New York's Lower East Side, now serving the neighborhood's Asian, African-American, and Latino population. And today, with over 9,500 highly skilled care providers, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York is the largest not-for-profit home health care agency in the nation, making over two million professional home visits to more than 100,000 patients each year.

Lillian Wald was elected to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans in 1965; she was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1976, and was honored by the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

In a speech to Vassar students on October 12, 1915, Ms. Wald encouraged the young women to serve the public. She quoted from Proverbs 31:20, "She reacheth forth her hands to the needy." These words are inscribed on the medal issued when Lillian Wald was inducted into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.

Bibliography: The Jewish Magazine (January 2002)


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