She married Sam Kantor and had a number of children, one of whom survived to adulthood and is a physician practicing in San Francisco.

Max, who was 46 at his son's birth, was born in western Russia or eastern Poland in 1862, and came to The United States in 1877 at 15, at which time he changed his last name to Lewis.

Max's wife, Hattie Lissner, was born in Massachusetts of German Jewish parents who immigrated in the mid 19th century.

Salim L. Lewis attended Boston University for three semesters, and dropped out because he could not afford tuition.

He started with Bear Stearns' partnership in 1937 with $20,000, loaned by his first and only wife, Diana Felger Bonnor Lewis, who was born in Newark, New Jersey of an American woman whose parents were German Lutheran, and an English father, Church of England—and he became a general partner of that firm.

With "by far the largest percentage of the profits.,[2] Cy Lewis ran Bear, Stearns & Company, a general partnership, from 1949 to his death.