Grandson of Bloomingdale’s founder supported older adults; his wife loved animals. Fund at The Trust supports scholarships for health care students.
Robert and Ellen Popper Scholarship Fund
Robert Lyman Popper (1908-1998) and Ellen Goldberg Popper (1928-2009)
Robert Lyman Popper had a privileged childhood, growing up in a four-story walkup a block from Central Park in a household that included his parents, his brother, and six maids. After retiring at age 54, he devoted the rest of his life to the less fortunate, advocating for the sick and aging in Westchester County.
Robert was born October 21, 1908, to Arthur W. and Corinne Bloomingdale Popper. His grandfather and namesake, Lyman Gustav Bloomingdale, co-founded one of New York City’s premier department stores. Lyman served with the Kansas Volunteers in the Civil War before he and his brother Joseph opened their first store, Bloomingdale’s Great East Side Bazaar, in 1872 on Third Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets. When their European fashion business outgrew that store in 1898, they moved to 59th and Third, where Bloomingdale’s still reigns.
Robert graduated from Yale University in 1930, then joined Bloomingdale Brothers as a junior buyer. In 1937, he left to take a job as vice president of Dellwood Dairy in Yonkers, one of the early home-delivery food companies. Before dawn every day, dozens of Dellwood drivers prowled the streets of Westchester in horse-drawn buggies, delivering milk in glass bottles. After World War II broke out, Robert took a leave from the dairy and enlisted in the Army as one of the country’s oldest privates. During service in Europe, he was promoted to captain.
In June 1938, he married Hermine Isaacs, managing editor and film critic of Theatre Arts Magazine, where she worked until 1947. Hermine, a graduate of Radcliffe College, joined Harper & Brothers as an editor in 1953 and quit three years later to freelance. The publishing house hired her back in 1958 to edit Martin Luther King Jr.’s account of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom.
In her initial review of that book’s first chapter, she wrote a letter to the civil rights leader, dated March 21, 1958, saying it was a pleasure to work on the project, and assuring him it was her job to convert “an expert orator’s style into a writer’s style.” In the acknowledgments, he thanked her for her “invaluable editorial assistance.” She also edited two of King’s other books, Why We Can’t Wait in 1964 and 1967’s Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Hermine died of cancer in 1968 at age 53.
The following year, Robert married Ellen Goldberg, and they divided their time between Armonk and New York City. “He felt very privileged and always felt he had to return something to the public,” Ellen said.
He served on many state and local healthcare boards, including the National Council on Aging, the Health and Hospital Planning Council for Southern New York, the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies now known as FPWA, and the New York State Office for the Aging in the Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Carey, and Mario Cuomo administrations. He also was president of the Westchester Council of Social Agencies and an advisor for the Westchester Office for the Aging, the Central Westchester Mental Health Council, and the Westchester Health Planning Council.
Ellen, meanwhile, co-founded the Animal Welfare League of Westchester and served on the board of the Westchester Medical Center.
They celebrated Robert’s 90th birthday with a party at Bloomingdale’s in White Plains. He died less than a month later, on November 17, 1998. Ellen died July 13, 2009, at age 80.
Their fund at The Trust provides scholarships to undergraduate or graduate students in the field of social work with a particular interest in health care.