Stricken sons moved Saul Sherr to life of volunteerism

By J.E. Geshwiler

For the AJC

Because two of their sons were afflicted with illness – one with schizophrenia, another with muscular dystrophy – Saul and Alice Sherr devoted a great part of their lives volunteering for organizations that combat those diseases and care for their victims.

Special Saul Sherr was a dedicated advocate for people with mental illnes.s

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Cynthia Wainscott of Cartersville, former executive director of Mental Health America of Georgia, called Mr. Sherr one of the most dedicated advocates for people with mental illness that she knew.

“He was an ever-present watchdog at the old Georgia Mental Health Institute (GMHI) on Briarcliff Road, making sure that patients there were not mistreated,” she said. “He had nerves of steel; there was no official too high in the system for him to approach in order to right a wrong.”

Saul Sherr, 86, died Wednesday at his Atlanta home of complications of melanoma, three years after the death of his wife of 59 years. His funeral was Friday at Congregation Shearith Israel with burial afterward at Crest Lawn Cemetery. Egalitarian Ma'ariv services are scheduled at his home Sunday through Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Orthodox Ma'ariv services will be held through Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. An Orthodox Minchaservice took place Sunday. Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care is in charge of arrangements.

The Sherrs’ son Neal, 24, died in 1986; the Sherrs were certain it was because of his sensitivity to an anti-schizophrenia medication. That loss, said another son, Laurence Sherr of Atlanta, motivated his parents to channel their energies toward helping others.

They each served terms as president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of DeKalb County. They presided over many monthly family support group meetings. Laurence Sherr said his father also spent countless evening hours on the phone advising and comforting callers who sought help for mentally ill family members.

Similarly, they gave many years’ service to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) after their son Joseph, now residing in Highland Park, N.J., was stricken as a boy with the disease.

“Dad could count bills and change quickly and accurately, and for a long time he was in charge of the money room during the MDA’s annual telethons,” said another son, Gilbert Sherr of Atlanta.

Mr. Sherr developed his facility with cash while operating a grocery store across from Herndon Homes on the near northwest side of downtown. For many years, Laurence Sherr said, his father put in 12-hour days, six days a week at the store.

Mr. Sherr sold his store in the mid-1980s and for the next 10 years was a genial counterman at Snack ‘n Shop, at that time a popular delicatessen in northwest Atlanta. “Dad was outgoing and engaging,” Laurence Sherr said. “He could talk to anybody from a college professor to a janitor.”

Gilbert Sherr said his father was an eternal optimist, looking forward to the future without even a glance backward. That applied to his own past. Born in Poland, he was 12 years old when he and 11 other members of his family managed to immigrate in 1937 to the United States, two years before his homeland was overrun by the Nazis. Mr. Sherr never had any interest in revisiting Poland nor did he care to talk about his early life there, Gilbert Sherr said.

Alice Sherr also averted becoming a Holocaust victim. Born in Germany, she was sent to a Jewish orphanage in Switzerland as a child in 1939, immigrated to the United States after World War II and met her husband-to-be in Atlanta.

Also surviving is one grandson.