פאני לורבר

Fannie Eller Lorber (1881-1958), philanthropist and community leader, born in Geishen, a small village near Odessa, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). In the early 1890s, her family immigrated to the United States and settled in the West Colfax neighborhood of Denver, Colorado, in 1896. In 1902 she married Jacob Lorber, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary. Together, they started a retail shoe business in a number of locations in the Rocky Mountain region.  In 1907, Lorber and her friend Bessie Willens founded the Denver Sheltering Home, which aimed to care for children whose parents had tuberculosis. Many of these families had come to Denver seeking its sunny climate and clean air. Lorber dedicated herself to the cause and served as the home's president until her passing. In 1920, she established a national fundraising office in New York City and created a network of support branches across the country to assist the shelter. When a vaccine was developed in the late 1940s, effectively eradicating tuberculosis, the facility shifted its focus to treating children with chronic, untreatable asthma and was renamed the National Jewish Home for Asthmatic Children. Aside from her charitable work, Lorber actively participated in various organizations. She was a member of the Temple Emanuel sisterhood, the Town Club, the Denver Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, and Hadassah.