Milton Brener

1930 - 2022

Milton Ernest Brener (1930-2022) passed away peacefully on December 25, 2022, in St. Joseph Carpenter's Hospice in New Orleans following a long and rich life. He was the son of Sol and Rose Feldman Brener, both of New Orleans, and the brother of Joyce and Sandra. A true native of New Orleans, Milton's earliest memories included running after a jazz funeral at the age of 5, and walking down Canal Boulevard with his father to watch the trains go past "the second set of railroad tracks," which he recalled as being "just about the last outpost of civilization" - but definitely worth the ice cream cone that always followed, "choice chocolate or vanilla." Milton also vividly recalled his first day of kindergarten, at A.H. Wilson School. "I really hated school" he liked to recall. "The first day I went, I came home for lunch and hid under the bed; my mother had to get a broom to force me out." But despite this less than auspicious beginning, Milton went on to graduate from Tulane Law School and to develop a lifelong interest in many different fields of scholarship. He served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Army, spending ten months in Korea and a year in Okinawa together with his wife Isabelle Feldstein and his little daughter Lisa. On returning to New Orleans, Milton entered the District Attorney's office - an experience that was to result years later in his first published book: The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power (1969). While still in his twenties, Milton went into private practice with Herbert Garon, occupying offices for many years first on Baronne Street and later on Julia. It was during these years that he also cultivated his love of flying; a passion that first began when, as a child, he would walk over to the New Orleans Lakefront Airport to peer through the fence at "open-cockpit, cloth-covered biplanes, relics of the romantic infancy of flying." His love of flying took him to many parts of the world, resulting in some spectacular views of mountain flying and also in his second published book, The Other Side of the Airport: the Private Pilot's World (1982). In addition to flying, Milton also had a lifelong love of opera, about which he wrote several critically acclaimed books, among them Opera Offstage (1996) and several studies reevaluating Richard Wagner's relationships with Jews. In 2007, he and his second wife, Atlanta-born Eileen Keiley Glancy, went to live for a number of years in Manhattan in order to enjoy opera to the full. There he also produced a steady stream of books on several different topics, among them UFOs – an interest he developed following his many conversations with other pilots on the subject. He was also interested in the emergence of facial expression in art, and in two subsequent books explored the links between this and the development of human empathy. In his later years, Milton turned increasingly to the study of physics, writing several books that explored a possible relationship between reincarnation and that aspect of quantum physics known as entanglement theory. In all of his books, Milton approached his subject from a well-researched scientific point of view, building his thesis with the same skills he had honed during his years as a practicing attorney. Milton Brener is survived by his wife Eileen, his two sons Neil and Matthew, his daughter Ann, and his three stepchildren, Helen, David, and Mark. His daughter Lisa (who always claimed to remember Okinawa, though just a toddler) died in 2019, but it was she who gave Milton his two grandchildren, Chelsea and Max Cusimano, and thanks to Max and his wife Samantha, two great-granddaughters as well, Rose and Fran Cusimano. May he rest in peace. Relatives and friends are invited to attend the visitation on Wednesday, January 11, 2023 at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd., New Orleans beginning at 10:00 am followed by eulogies at 11:00 am. Interment will be private. To view and sign the family guestbook, please visit www.lakelawnmetairie.com.