Albert Brenner Glickman Library at USM

314 Forest Avenue

Our first stop on the USM campus is the Albert Brenner Glickman Family Library. Joseph Brenner, the patriarch of the Brenner family (and Albert’s grandfather), was a founder of the Jewish Home for Aged, now called The Cedars (Stop E09). Mildred Brenner Glickman, Albert’s mother, was the first woman to chair a division of the Jewish Federation. She also served as a field director for the United Service Organizations in World War I. Albert Brenner Glickman and his wife Judith donated $1,000,000 to transform the 1919 building (which had been a large bakery and then a plumbing supply company) into the modern seven-story academic library you see today.

Albert Glickman was born in Portland in 1934, during the height of the Great Depression. After his father died in an auto accident when he was three, he was raised by his widowed mother, Mildred, until she remarried Joe Glickman 10 years later. Al spent his teen, college, and law school years in Southern California, where he married Judith Ellis, whom he had met at UCLA. In California and out West, Al made a fortune as a commercial real estate developer, but his heart stayed in Maine. Al, Judy and their kids vacationed here each summer and returned for good to Cape Elizabeth in the 1980s. Al was a noted philanthropist and donated generously to scores of artistic, civic and educational causes across the country, particularly in Maine and California, and he served on multiple boards of businesses and academic and cultural organizations. Al was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in his 70s, and died from complications of the disease in 2013 at age 79.

Judy Glickman (now Glickman-Lauder) is a noted humanitarian, philanthropist, and artist whose photographs have been shown at museums as well as college and university galleries throughout Maine, the U.S., and Europe. She frequently lectures on the Holocaust, the subject of much of her photography. In 2015, Judy married Leonard Lauder (1933-2025), who was one of Al’s best friends, in what the New York Times celebrated as a true love story.