Dorothy P. Newhouse

Dorothy P. Newhouse of West Orange and Delray Beach, Fla., died June 14, 2011. Born in New York City, she moved to New Britain, Conn., as an infant, and to West Orange after World War II.

Mrs. Newhouse worked in hospitals as a registered nurse until the mid-1940s in Massachusetts and Queens. She was a school nurse for the West Orange Public Schools and a teacher at West Orange Mountain High School until the mid ’70s.

She had been enrolled as an art student at Pratt Institute in New York City, but abandoned this career choice in favor of nursing after seeing starving artists on the streets of New York during the Great Depression. She studied nursing at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Hartford, Conn., where she met her husband, Nahman, whose family owned the laundry that cleaned the nurses’ uniforms. In the ’60s she earned a bachelor’s degree at Jersey City University.

In West Orange, she served as president of the local B’nai B’rith chapter and the PTA. She did set design for the National Council of Jewish Women and annually decorated the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria for the B’nai B’rith donor luncheon.

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She also volunteered in Florida for the Palm Beach County Library, Planned Parenthood, the Hadassah Nurses’ Council, League of Women Voters, and other organizations.

Predeceased by her husband of more than 50 years in 1985, she is survived by two daughters, Barbara Reiss and Lynne Newhouse; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Services were held June 17 with arrangements by Jewish Memorial Chapel, Clifton. Memorial contributions may be made to Planned Parenthood or Hadassah.