Ann H. Abbrecht:
Counseling, Teaching,
Community Leadership
Ann Camille Hochstein Abbrecht taught history for thirty years, including twenty (?) years at Newman. She retired from teaching in order to pursue her lifelong professional calling as a psychotherapist. As she explained to me, she was really a psychotherapist her whole life, even as a child. As a teacher, she always made sure that her classrooms were safe places where students could express themselves. Ann earned her M.S. in counseling at Loyola University in New Orleans in 2009 and won awards for her outstanding performance and humanitarian efforts as a graduate student. After working as a counselor at Tulane for several years, she opened her own practice in 2012. Ann sees children, adolescents, families, and adults, helping her clients with difficult life transitions.
Ann attended Newman from kindergarten through twelfth grade. [Let’s say something more about the influence of Newman.] She attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in History and English and a minor in Education. Following college graduation she moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and taught “Americanism vs. Communism” to high school seniors in an inner-city school. Her innovative approach was not always fully appreciated by the school administration and within two years she was back in New Orleans, where she has lived ever since. [Let’s say something more about your teaching at Newman.]
She has two adult children from her marriage to Richard L. Abbrecht, who died at the age of 69 in 2017. Both Matthew and Jennifer are married, and each has a boy and a girl. [Something about Matthew.] Jennifer followed her mother’s example in entering the helping professions and has a doctoral degree in nursing. Ann is very involved in the lives of her grandchildren. She is also devoted to the city of New Orleans, having served on the Boards of Friends of the Cabildo, Friends of City Park, and Newman School, first as President of the Newman Alumni Association and then as Newman Parent President. She was [is?] on the Executive Board of the Anti-Defamation League and on the Advisory Board for the Loyola University School of Counseling.
Ann’s role model for public service and ethical caring for others was her father, Solomon Hochstein (1903-1969), called Mr. Solly by his employees. [I would like to say a little more about his work.] She described her father as someone people came to, who taught by example, and as “the epitome of a good man.” He was “fair and just” and embodied the values that have guided Ann’s lifelong work in teaching, counseling, and serving her community. Very sadly, her father died from colon cancer during the summer of 1969 after Ann finished her sophomore year of college. Ann was able to visit with him and to say good-bye.
Her father’s grandparents were French speaking Jews who settled in New Orleans after emigrating from Alsace to England to the Bahamas, and then escaping a hurricane in the Bahamas. Her great-grandfather Matthias W. Salomon had a family store on St. Charles Avenue, and they had a home at 5428 St. Charles, where her grandparents and great aunt lived. The family home, where Ann spent a lot of time growing up, was built by the prominent architect Emile Weil (1878-1945), who also designed a number of historic buildings in New Orleans, including Touro Synagogue. Unfortunately the Salomon family home was sold and then approved for demolition by the New Orleans City Council, even after 200 people, including Ann, attended a public meeting in November 2007 to voice their disapproval.
Ann’s grandfather was also a part owner in L. Frank & Company, established in 1892 by Newman classmate Flip Frank’s great grandfather and later owned by his grandfather and then father and uncle. As a little girl, Ann loved to go into the store to candle the eggs. She recalls having “so much fun” and in retrospect realizes that the employees were being very kind in tolerating the help of a small child picking up eggs.
Ann’s maternal grandmother, Maria Boudin, was Cajun, and Ann’s mother, Muriel Stecca Hochstein, lived to be 93. [Lets say something more about your mother.] Ann was raised Catholic within the context of a close multigenerational family setting with strong Jewish ties. Spirituality is a very personal subject for Ann, and she maintains ties with her paternal Jewish roots, for example, supporting the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans.
I think that the concept of generativity describes Ann’s lifelong work. Generativity is a term that means caring for the next generation. This caring can be biological or social; it implies creating for future generations in ways that outlive the self. In addition to raising her own healthy adult children, Ann has always been involved in helping other people to learn. As a teacher she focused on helping young people to understand the world around them and its history. As a counselor she assists her clients in learning about themselves and their options. As a community leader she helps citizens to live more cooperatively and with less division.
As chair of the ADL’s Unity Day in 2015, Ann said, “Unity Through Understanding Day is my favorite ADL program.” Her quiet community leadership continues, and this year she participated in the ADL’s Shana Glass National Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. “Building spaces of understanding of others” was described in In the News as an ADL goal, and I think it is a beautiful description of Ann’s entire lifework.