At Temple Sinai in Stamford, Connecticut, the story of creation does more than live in the words of Genesis. For more than 50 years, it has glowed in wool and thread on the doors of the Torah ark, in a four-paneled tapestry conceived and stitched by Lucille Janis Weener with a small circle of women. The light emerging from darkness in that tapestry became an emblem of her life — one marked by optimism, humor and devoted volunteer service.
Weener died on Nov. 7 at 92 at her home of 45 years in McLean, Virginia. “She was a kind, witty and generous genius — a formidable historian and prolific volunteer,” her daughter, Michele Janis, said.
Born on Aug. 7, 1933, in the Bronx to Max and Helen Goldfeder, Lucille was the third of four children. She grew up in a home shaped by refugees from Eastern Europe and steeped in Yiddish.
As a girl, Lucille experienced World War II through headlines and the terrible silence when relatives’ letters stopped coming from Europe. Her son, Gordon Janis, recalled her pride in winning a school essay contest about the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A high school history teacher deepened her interest in American history.
History became real for her when an aunt, uncle and two younger cousins moved into her family’s two-bedroom apartment. They described hiding from the Nazis in the Polish forest for three years of constant starvation, freezing unsheltered winters and narrow escapes.
Her sister, Bernice Bernstein, said that those relatives made Lucille more aware of what survivors had been through: “I think that it helped her develop a deep understanding of family history and the importance of Jewish community.”
Earning a bachelor’s degree in history from New York University in 1954, she briefly worked for her father’s belt business in Manhattan’s Garment District before taking her first research job at a newsreel company, Paramount News, which fueled her passion for history.
A blind date, arranged by her sister and future sister-in-law, led her to journalist Howard Janis, recently returned from covering the Korean War from Tokyo for the International News Service. They married in 1955 and settled in Stamford when Howard joined IBM Corp. as a technology writer. They raised four children there: Pam, Caroline, Michele and Gordon.
Beyond home, her interests widened. Her love of trivia landed her on “Jeopardy!” in 1969. That same year, while preparing for daughter Pam’s bat mitzvah, she gazed at the Temple’s drab beige ark cover — “it looked like a shower curtain,” she would say later — and envisioned a beautiful tapestry in its place. Her wish to embroider the curtain soon led to a five-year collaboration with artist Veronica Roth and a small group of women, including her mother-in-law, Ida Janis. They produced a 7-by-12-foot tapestry depicting the creation story. The piece has been called “a masterwork of American Jewish folk art.”
And then, life changed. Widowed in 1976 at 42, Lucille began working full-time. She moved to Virginia in 1980 when she joined Satellite Business Systems, which launched the first private satellite into space. In 1985, she married NBC radio news producer Sumner Weener, living briefly in Manhattan before returning to northern Virginia. “With Sumner, she let her hair down a bit,” said Gordon Janis. She discovered “bloody marys, breakfast buffets, Las Vegas and blackjack.”
During this time, she launched a business, Gifts of History, which produced historically themed items for organizations’ events. For instance, Bernstein noted Weener’s idea of presenting theater professionals with framed replicas of the Ford’s Theatre ticket from the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. “She had a knack for linking people to history,” Bernstein said.
Weener served as a docent at the Kennedy Center for 28 years, guiding thousands of visitors. “Mom knew the donor nation of every room, carpet, chandelier and work of art,” Michele Janis said. She led groups through the halls and theaters of the vast building until her early 80s.
Weener next volunteered at the Newseum, downtown D.C.’s former museum of news and journalism. There, “we quickly noticed Lucille’s sharp wit, knowledge of history and her engagement in current events,” said Libby Bawcombe, then the Newseum’s manager of multimedia design. When Lucille and Sumner offered to donate his trove of NBC News reel-to-reel radio tapes from the 1950s and ’60s, said Bawcombe, “the collection she described was so surprising that her boss didn’t believe her.” Weener personally catalogued the 14 years of broadcasts for digitization, unearthing what had been a lost trove of American history for researchers. The collection is now with the Freedom Forum, which had built and ran the Newseum until it closed late in 2019.
At almost age 90, Weener began volunteering remotely for the “By the People” transcription project at the Library of Congress, where she transcribed and annotated nearly 700 fading archival documents, most notably the correspondence of President James Garfield. Her last project work was submitted two weeks before she died of interstitial lung disease.
Weener stayed connected Jewishly. She was a longtime member of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church and later Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, where she joined weekly Torah study and Zoom chat sessions.
Family and friends remember Lucille for her humor, quickness and warmth. “There were too many descriptions of her as ‘a force of nature’ to count,” her daughter, Pam Janis, said. “Mom drew people to her like matzo balls to chicken soup.”
That same spirit carried into the traditions she cherished most. Her favorite holiday was Thanksgiving, a tradition she shaped with a ritual of sharing gratitude around the table.
“This year,” Pam Janis said, “we’ll all be saying how grateful we are that she was our mother.”
Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.
