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| Lila Weinberger | |
Very sad news from California. Lilla Weinberger, co-owner of Readers' Books in Sonoma died suddenly on Sunday. She was 78 and had fallen down a flight of stairs.
Weinberger and her husband, Andy, founded Readers' Books in 1991 and built it into a local institution. Andy remembered that during a visit to Sonoma in 1990, she was walking around the Plaza and noticed there were no literary bookstores. Her sister-in-law said that the one that had been there closed, which "started Lilla to thinking." The Weinbergers soon moved back to her native California and opened Readers' Books.
Weinberger was deeply involved in independent bookselling. She served on the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association board and was a board member of the American Booksellers Association from 1997 to 2003.
She also was involved in other causes: she worked on Barack Obama's campaigns, volunteering to work in Nevada and running the Reno office. She became the Northern California regional head of Organizing for Action. In 2012, she was tapped to be OFA's state field director of Maryland, which meant she was responsible for sending volunteers into purple states like Virginia to turn them blue. She worked on the Ed Markey for Senate campaign in 2014, then took a position as the executive director of the National Foster Youth Institute in Los Angeles. When that job ended in 2017, she and Andy moved back to Sonoma where she worked on the capital campaign of the Sebastiani Theatre Foundation.
Her husband, who will "grieve her loss forever," said she "leaves behind a fierce legacy of love and dedication." He suggested that those wishing to contribute in Lilla's name may send money to Sonoma Overnight Support, the Sebastiani Theatre Foundation or the National Democratic Redistricting PAC, adding, "And if you can't give money, remember to vote!"