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Graduating from City College in 1896, Louis began his career as a public-school teacher and ten years later received his principal’s license. The year 1908 was momentous. He was appointed principal of Public School 43 in the Bronx, where he interviewed Sophie Levison for a position as a kindergarten teacher. After he hired her, he reportedly said: “She can hang her coat in my closet anytime.” She did. In July, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue officiated at their wedding and signed the gilt-edged Torah that commemorated the occasion.10 The choice of the Free Synagogue–founded only a year earlier as a “pewless and dueless” institution committed to social justice–was in keeping with the progressive outlook that marked Louis’s career.11 The couple’s honeymoon in Europe showed that in one generation Europe could become a foreign continent: a place to visit, not to come from. In keeping with custom, Sophie did not return to work after marrying. She gave birth to Harry the next year.12

The Marks and Levison families blended well, enjoying good times together and supporting one another in bad. Deborah and Alfred Hirschbach joined Sophie and Louis in celebrating the marriage of Leo Levison in 1912. For this occasion Deborah and Alfred composed (and had formally printed) doggerel songs, including a “beautiful quartet” in which “the other Schwiegermutter” (mother-in-law), Sarah Katz Levison, yearns: “If only with my Hannah some day I’ll also have this joy.” Her wish was fulfilled two years later, when Hannah married Louis’s brother Harry, a widower.13 For that event, the same forces presented a “Musical Photoplay” consisting of more doggerel set to popular tunes. When Hannah died after giving birth in 1915, Harry’s family joined Louis and Sophie’s household, his two daughters becoming Harry Julian’s quasi-siblings.

Through energetic cultivation of his talents and his stock portfolio, Louis Marks became sufficiently prosperous to see his son through private school and send him to Harvard for his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees (and, in between, to the University of Berlin). He also sent him on a high school trip to Europe in 1926, which Harry recorded in the first of his extant diaries. Louis and Sophie made at least four foreign trips after their honeymoon. Their travels in North Africa in 1932 yielded a somewhat surprising photograph of Sophie, grown pleasingly plump, smiling bravely atop a horse, en route to the oasis at Tozeur, Tunisia.