Dec 10, 2020
Ava Weiss, the highly regarded, former longtime art director at Greenwillow Books, died on November 25 at the age of 95.
Weiss was born Ava Morgenstern in 1925 in Vienna, where her father Julius was an executive for the Czech-based shoe manufacturer Bata. According to Weiss’s son Andrew, Bata relocated the family, who were Jews, to the U.S. soon after the 1938 German annexation of Austria to save them from Nazi persecution. Shortly after the family’s arrival in New York City, Julius Morgenstern died, and Weiss and her mother Alice found work sewing epaulets on uniforms for the U.S. Army to support themselves. In those years Weiss also contributed to the household by waitressing and she was also named one of the “Miss Subways” winners whose posters appeared on New York City subway trains.