Meet the woman who devoted her life to raising hundreds of kids during the Depression, WWII

ERIE, Pa. – Imagine baking birthday cakes, sewing costumes and helping solve math problems for hundreds of kids. The matron of a long-ago Pennsylvania orphanage did just that for 25 years, until her death in 1949.

Bess Fall was determined to be a mom to the children at the former B'nai B'rith Orphanage, and was equally determined that they would grow up in a "family home."

She and her husband knew that life in an orphanage could be difficult.

Fall grew up in a Philadelphia area orphanage after her parents died in a fire at the family's Colorado home when she was 9. Her husband, M. Garson Fall, was raised in an orphanage in New York.