ANDREE ABECASSIS

1938 - 2020

ABECASSIS--Andree, 81, died November 4, at home in Berkeley, California, surrounded by close friends and following a brief struggle with cancer. Born December 20, 1938, in New York City to Albert and Lettie Abecassis, Andree was raised in an apartment on West 70th Street with her parents, maternal grandmother and maternal aunts - all members of a large Sephardic family from Essaouira, Morocco. She attended PS 87, Joan of Arc Junior HS, the High School of Music and Art and Barnard College ('60) - every one of those schools reachable on the M104 city bus. Editor-in-chief of the Barnard Bulletin, she earned an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and pursued a career in photojournalism, working for years at The Saturday Evening Post and later Channel 13 and The 51st State. In 1973, Andree moved cross-country to Berkeley, where for 15 years she lugged her heavy camera equipment all over the state as a freelancer photographer shooting celebrities, events, and her favorite subjects: her many friends and their families. In the '90s she cheerfully leaped into yet another media career, joining her mother at Ann Elmo Agency - the family literary agency founded by two of her aunts. An only child, Andree moved back from California in the '00s to help supervise the care of her mother. When Lettie died at age 104, Andree was able to close the New York City apartment which had been her family's residence for 80 years, and move back to Berkeley, where she had just started yet another new chapter, working with the publisher Heyday Books, when she passed. She is survived by legions of admiring cousins from the Abecassis, Elmaleh, Lambert, Leive and Levy families... and many, many loving friends. She will be greatly missed. Donations in her memory may be made to the Andree Abecassis Fund at the Alumni & Friends of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. A Zoom memorial/shiva will be held Sunday November 22 from 2pm - 4pm ET. For info: AbecassisInfo@gmail.com.