Berensons and Bensons receive ADL’s top award
By ALAN SMASON
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) apparently considers having a last name starting with the letter “b” as a good thing. The organization’s founder and longtime director, A.I. “B” Botnick, is the first example of this. Since 1995, he has been memorialized with the A.I. Botnick Torch of Liberty Award, presented to members of the local community who have followed the organization’s tenets designed to lessen prejudice and fight racism throughout America.
Joan and Dr. Gerald Berenson hold their A.I. Botnick Torch of Liberty Award, left, with presenters Margot Garon and Dr. Keith Ferdinand at right. (Photo by Alan Smason)
This year the South Central Chapter of the ADL bestowed the award upon two couples whose last names also begin with “b” – Dr. Gerald and Joan Berenson and Tom and Gayle Benson.
The opulent Empire Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Hotel was the site for the annual ADL award dinner on Thursday, Dec. 4, the first under the helm of recently installed South Central Region director Allison Padilla-Goodman.
Tom Benson, the owner of two professional sports franchises, the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League and the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association, was unable to attend the dinner, due to an inflamed knee that recently went though a surgical procedure.
Dennis Lauscha, who serves as president of both teams, spoke about his boss, who grew up in the Ninth Ward under meagre means and rose through businesses in New Orleans and San Antonio to become one of America’s richest men. Lauscha accepted the award on Benson’s behalf.
During a brief biographical description from former ADL board president Joyce Pulitzer, Gayle Bird Benson was described as a warm and giving person with a keen eye as an interior decorator, who caught the eye of Tom Benson while attending worship services in church. After a whirlwind romance, the two were married a year later.
Gayle Benson, second from left accepts ADL Torch of Liberty Award with Dennis Lauscha framed by Joyce Pulitzer, left, and ADL South Central director Allison Padilla-Goodman. (Photo by Alan Smason)
The two have contributed to the ADL’s many programs in addition to supporting Brother Martin High School, Tulane University, Loyola University, Notre Dame Seminary, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ochsner Cancer Institute, Team Gleason and many other worthwhile charities and schools.
The gracious brunette spoke briefly on the honor afforded the couple, who have recently celebrated a ten-year anniversary.
“We would both like to thank the ADL’s local advisory board and the commitment it demonstrates, which is incredibly inspirational,” she said.
Following personal remarks by Margot Garon on her friend Joan Berenson and her commitment to supporting the State of Israel, Berenson went to the dais to deliver her acceptance speech. “Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish issue,” she stated. “It’s an American issue. It’s not a new problem. It’s an enduring one.”
She cited the ADL’s ongoing message in schools with its “No Place for Hate” programming and its commitment to fighting against bias for immigrant groups that have sought refuge in the United States as of great significance to the local community.
“New Orleans is extremely fortunate that we have had an extraordinary ADL and the turnout tonight and the names of those on the board attest to that,” she pointed out.
Joan Berenson addresses the ADL Torch of Liberty Award crowd as Margo Garon, center, and her husband and co-recipient, Dr. Gerald Berenson, waits at right. (Photo by Alan Smason)
At first, she spoke on the need for leadership and the importance of successful fund-raising drives. “The success of fundraising to me is not in the numbers,” she mused, “but it’s the number of people whose lives we touch.”
Later, Berenson turned her talk into an advocacy for volunteerism even for those women who also now have careers. “Don’t cut yourself off,” she warned, citing that the two – careers and volunteerism – are a good paring and “work well together.” The couple travel extensively, she said, and bemoaned “the word ‘volunteer’ isn’t even in the vocabulary of many of the places we have gone. It’s their loss.”
Berenson also specifically mentioned her work with the Jewish Federation of New Orleans and the National Council of Jewish Women as being of great value to her, but insisted that she used her involvement as an example and not to diminish her work with other volunteer organizations. “Most of what I have learned about leadership, I learned from Council,” she boasted. “Federation and Council were wayplaces for me to begin my career, and I have stayed because of their continual excellence.”
“Thank you for being here. Thank you for being involved and what would the world be like without each and every one of you?” she said in concluding her speech.
As Dr. Berenson took his turn at the podium, he realized he had an unenviable task. “Man that’s tough trying to follow my wife,” he said with his typical drawl.
On behalf of his wife, Berenson thanked the ADL for their honor, but took time to also recognize his outstanding fellow co-recipients, the Bensons. “You’ve heard about all their accomplishments that they’ve done in New Orleans and for the state and in the United States,” he noted. “We have to thank you.”
Dr. Gerald Berenson speaks at 2014 Torch of Liberty Dinner. (Photo by Alan Smason)
Berenson applauded the ADL for their efforts in not only combatting anti-Semitism, the reason behind its founding over 100 years ago, but also as a vehicle that addresses social injustice and social inequity.
Because of his Jewish identity, Berenson recalled he was bullied as a youth while growing up in Bogalusa. He remembered a bloody nose that bled for a week as a result of one severe beating. This caused in him a desire to learn how to box at the local Y.M.C.A. and to play high school football. “The lesson is that bullying tends to stop when confronted,” he said.
A child of the Depression, he remembered how tough a struggle he and his family had and the threat to the Jewish community in Bogalusa during the Civil Rights era, when the downtown area was targeted for destruction by hate groups because of the number of Jewish businesses there.
“Interestingly, it was prevented by the Ku Klux Klan,” Dr. Berenson continued. “A strange event.”
Berenson learned how hate can have severe repercussions. He recalled that the first coordinator for his heart study had a cross burned on his lawn and lost an eye to violence, while one of his nurses’ husbands – a black sheriff in Washington Parish – was ambushed and lost his life. “These made an impression on me and showed the desperate need for something like the work of ADL,” he said.
Berenson also decried the effects of poverty, poor nutrition, lack of family structure and a 40% dropout rate from high school as continuing factors that contribute to poor health, as evinced by the famous Bogalusa heart study he conducted and is quoted still today by heart disease researchers worldwide.
Barney Mintz Leadership Award recipients irving Warshauer, left, and Caroline Good, right, flank Nancy Timm. (Photo by Alan Smason)
He also related ongoing efforts in Washington Parish of his compreshensive Heart Smart program to instill in 5,000 youngsters at an early age self-respect and acceptance of others. “It begins in kindergarten teaching self-esteem and lifestyles to be human; humanists of morals and ethics with lesson plans of ten words to live by like compassion, justice, ethics, love and respect,” he acknowledged.
That program has also been extended to include parents and teachers.
Berenson villified the fanaticism associated with the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) and for its indoctrination of ninth graders to “kill the infidels.” He said he looks to the words of the Kaddish prayer that read in part “”Let there be grace and kindness, compassion and love for for them and for us all.’ To me that is the tent of Judaism,” he said.
“ADL has done a wonderful job,” he concluded. “It has the highest esteem. It needs to be extended to a greater number of children, particularly at a young age.”
Earlier in the evening, Irving Warshauer, a successful attorney and Caroline Good, an adjunct professor at Tulane University were both presented with the Barney Mintz Leadership Award by ADL Regional Board chair Nancy Timm.
Galitia Jones, a student at International High School and a member of the ADL’s Donald Mintz National Youth Leadership Mission also thanked the organization for her selection to the group that annually travels to Washington, D.C. Introduced by ADL education project coordinator Lindsay Baach Friedmann, Jones read a special poem she wrote, which evoked her feelings on being part of the mission.
Padilla-Goodman also spoke briefly about the mission and vision of the ADL and showed a short video presentation titled “Imagine a World without Hate.” With accompanying music by John Lennon (“Imagine”), it purported what might have come of victims of hate Anne Frank, Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Daniel Pearl, Jasper Byrd, Yitzhak Rabin and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “If we all stood up to bigotry, we could all change history,” the slide read.
