JULIUS HELLENBRAND

HELLENBRAND--Julius A.

The Honorable Julius A. Hellenbrand, long-time resident of Brooklyn, New York, died on October 28th in Northridge, California. He was 102. He was married to Gail Abbey Hellenbrand (1921-1996), who was the first Jewish Assemblywoman in New York State, from 1966-1970. In the late 1950s through 1960s, they were important members of the Brooklyn Regular Democratic Party, along with neighbors and friends Abe Beame, Hugh Carey, Anthony Travia, Stanley Steingut, and Arthur Levitt. A graduate of Alexander Hamilton High School, he won the New York City Current Events Bee in 1930 sponsored by The Brooklyn Eagle; he was runner-up in 1931. With an LLD from St. John's University in 1937, in 1938 he opened a law office at 305 Broadway in Manhattan where he was joined by Eddie Sharf, a cousin. After enlisting in the Army in 1942, he was selected to learn Japanese at the Universities of Minnesota and Michigan, in anticipation of invading Japan. After the War, Sharf and Hellenbrand became partners in the Brooklyn/Queens power-house law firm, Eddie Sharf (President of national B'Nai Zion), Lester Holtzman (Congressman), Thomas Mackell (State Senator, District Attorney, Queens County), and Julius A. Hellenbrand. He practiced law for nearly thirty years before Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed him as a Judge in the Criminal Court in 1969. He ended his career on the bench in 1992, as a New York Supreme Court Judge. He was a board member of the Menorah Home on Bushwick Avenue and of Union Temple on Eastern Parkway, both in Brooklyn, where he was active in many charities and fraternal orders. He was the son of Eastern European immigrants, Fannie and Louis H. Hellenbrand, neither of whom read English well; Fannie spoke Yiddish, never comfortable with English. Louis drove milk trucks and labored as a carpenter and superintendent of apartment buildings. Julius was the brother of Samuel Hellenbrand (1917-2011), whom President Reagan appointed as Vice Chairman of Amtrak. Before that, Samuel was Vice President of Real Estate for International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. and previously, the Vice President of Real Estate for the Penn Central Railroad. Julius is survived by nieces Kathy Rocklen, Linda Silberstein, and Joan Ziskin, nephew Bob Ziskin, and by son, Harold L. (Provost Emeritus, California State University, Northridge) and his wife, Donna.