Evelyn Loeb Beilenson, former publisher of Peter Pauper Press, died October 4. She was 83. Born in Paris just before WWII, she was the daughter of Morris and Johanna Loeb, who had moved to France from Germany in 1934. Held in separate detention camps in France when war broke out, the family eventually reunited and traveled overland to Spain and Portugal. They obtained papers and emigrated to New York City in 1941.
Evelyn Loeb grew up to emulate her father, an entrepreneur and business owner. In the 1970s, she co-founded a successful interior design company, but within a decade moved on to help her attorney husband, Nick Beilenson, resurrect his family's publishing company, Peter Pauper Press--which had been started in 1928--after his parents' deaths.
The Beilensons transformed the company from a struggling small book publisher into a multimillion-dollar business. At Peter Pauper Press, Evelyn Beilenson also wrote or compiled more than 60 books, including Simple American Cooking, Wit and Wisdom of Famous American Women, and the children's picture book, The Zoo Is Closed Today.
A publisher for almost three decades, she once wrote: "In the midst of our busy lives, we must find the magic that makes our souls soar."