Louise Polner, retired Great Neck public school teacher, dies at 94
A teacher and school administrator, Louise Polner was active in animal rights and peace movements. Credit: Polner family
Great Neck’s Louise Polner came of age in Camelot, turning 30 the year John F. Kennedy became president. A young wife and mother, she championed causes ranging from animal rights to the peace movement against the Vietnam War, side by side with her husband, the late author and veterans’ advocate Murray Polner.
"I remember she wept the day the war ended," said her son Robert Polner, recalling her relief.
As a substitute teacher in New York City and later as a teacher and administrator in the Great Neck public school system, "She was a creative force in both arts and crafts," her son said. "She could fill in in industrial arts or printing or wood shop or art classes or home ec."
As a volunteer, Louise Polner designed and sewed hundreds of original costumes for Great Neck South High and Middle School productions in the 1970s and '80s, and served as volunteer president of the now-closed Sholem Aleichem School in Queens.
Polner died of cancer Feb. 14 at the Mary Ann Tully Hospice Inn in Melville. She was 94.
"An amazing woman," said Jack Harrison, who with his wife, Meg, were Louise and Murray Polner’s neighbors for decades, sharing holidays and dinners out. "Well-read, knowledgeable. You could talk to her about any current events."
Her concerns stretched from the international stage to her Great Neck street. "One time my car broke down, and this was before cellphones," recalled Meg Harrison. "And I was upset that my kids were going to get home from school and nobody would be there. And when I got off the bus and finally got home, Louise had taken them in. She was extremely kind and neighborly."
"My mom stood only 5 feet tall and 110 pounds, but she was a giant to me," Robert Polner said, "because she was such a grounded, determined and well-rounded person — a homemaker and teacher who was also mechanical around the house, a skilled and original artist, gardener, quiltmaker and seamstress."
Born Louise J. Greenwald on April 19, 1930, in Manhattan, the only child of traveling salesman Robert Greenwald and secretary Marion Fischer Greenwald, she was raised from age 3 in Forest Hills, Queens.
Artistic from a young age, she graduated from the High School of Music & Art, now LaGuardia Arts, in 1948, and went on to what is now Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia.
By this time she had met Murray Polner, a fellow counselor at a Jewish camp in the upstate Bear Mountain region. He lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, she in Queens, and theirs was a subway romance before they married in June 1950. That year she transferred from Tyler to complete her bachelor's in art education at New York University in February 1953.
Later that year Murray was inducted into the U.S. Army, and the couple moved to Augusta, Georgia. There she worked at one of the city’s segregated schools, teaching Black children during the Jim Crow era. A year later she sailed on a freighter bound for Tokyo, where Murray was stationed as an Army intelligence officer. They returned to the United States in 1955.
Living in Queens, she began subbing in New York City public schools before switching to those of Great Neck when the couple moved there in 1961. In the 1980s, when she was named home economics department chair at Great Neck South Middle School, she returned to college to earn a master’s in secondary education. She retired from teaching in 1994.
In later life, "her grandchildren called the house Camp Grandma," said her son, "because everything was planned from meals to TV time to arts and crafts projects, to trips to the park, like she did with us growing up." Additionally, she volunteered at the INN, a Hempstead organization for homeless people.
In addition to her son Robert, of Queens, she is survived by another son, Alex Polner, of Montclair, New Jersey, and a daughter, Beth Polner Abrahams, of Oyster Bay; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her husband, an author of books including "No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran" (1971), died in 2019.
Following cremation, she was interred alongside her husband at the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale. There was no public service.
Great Neck’s Louise Polner came of age in Camelot, turning 30 the year John F. Kennedy became president. A young wife and mother, she championed causes ranging from animal rights to the peace movement against the Vietnam War, side by side with her husband, the late author and veterans’ advocate Murray Polner.
"I remember she wept the day the war ended," said her son Robert Polner, recalling her relief.
As a substitute teacher in New York City and later as a teacher and administrator in the Great Neck public school system, "She was a creative force in both arts and crafts," her son said. "She could fill in in industrial arts or printing or wood shop or art classes or home ec."
As a volunteer, Louise Polner designed and sewed hundreds of original costumes for Great Neck South High and Middle School productions in the 1970s and '80s, and served as volunteer president of the now-closed Sholem Aleichem School in Queens.
Polner died of cancer Feb. 14 at the Mary Ann Tully Hospice Inn in Melville. She was 94.
"An amazing woman," said Jack Harrison, who with his wife, Meg, were Louise and Murray Polner’s neighbors for decades, sharing holidays and dinners out. "Well-read, knowledgeable. You could talk to her about any current events."
Her concerns stretched from the international stage to her Great Neck street. "One time my car broke down, and this was before cellphones," recalled Meg Harrison. "And I was upset that my kids were going to get home from school and nobody would be there. And when I got off the bus and finally got home, Louise had taken them in. She was extremely kind and neighborly."
"My mom stood only 5 feet tall and 110 pounds, but she was a giant to me," Robert Polner said, "because she was such a grounded, determined and well-rounded person — a homemaker and teacher who was also mechanical around the house, a skilled and original artist, gardener, quiltmaker and seamstress."
Born Louise J. Greenwald on April 19, 1930, in Manhattan, the only child of traveling salesman Robert Greenwald and secretary Marion Fischer Greenwald, she was raised from age 3 in Forest Hills, Queens.
Artistic from a young age, she graduated from the High School of Music & Art, now LaGuardia Arts, in 1948, and went on to what is now Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia.
By this time she had met Murray Polner, a fellow counselor at a Jewish camp in the upstate Bear Mountain region. He lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, she in Queens, and theirs was a subway romance before they married in June 1950. That year she transferred from Tyler to complete her bachelor's in art education at New York University in February 1953.
Later that year Murray was inducted into the U.S. Army, and the couple moved to Augusta, Georgia. There she worked at one of the city’s segregated schools, teaching Black children during the Jim Crow era. A year later she sailed on a freighter bound for Tokyo, where Murray was stationed as an Army intelligence officer. They returned to the United States in 1955.
Living in Queens, she began subbing in New York City public schools before switching to those of Great Neck when the couple moved there in 1961. In the 1980s, when she was named home economics department chair at Great Neck South Middle School, she returned to college to earn a master’s in secondary education. She retired from teaching in 1994.
In later life, "her grandchildren called the house Camp Grandma," said her son, "because everything was planned from meals to TV time to arts and crafts projects, to trips to the park, like she did with us growing up." Additionally, she volunteered at the INN, a Hempstead organization for homeless people.
In addition to her son Robert, of Queens, she is survived by another son, Alex Polner, of Montclair, New Jersey, and a daughter, Beth Polner Abrahams, of Oyster Bay; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her husband, an author of books including "No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran" (1971), died in 2019.
Following cremation, she was interred alongside her husband at the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale. There was no public service.
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'I have never been to New York' Jim Vennard, 61, an electrical engineer from Missouri, received a $250 ticket for passing a stopped school bus in Stony Brook, a place he said he has never visited. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn reports.
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