MIRIAM WARSHOW

1942 - 2022

WARSHOW--Miriam K. Miriam K. Warshow, a longtime resident of Southern California and of New York City, died December 29 in a memory care facility in the San Fernando Valley. She was 80 and had been suffering for years with Alzheimer's. Born Miriam Joan Kessler in Seattle on September 16, 1942, to parents Nina and Jack Kessler and known to family and friends as Mimi, she moved to Los Angeles in 1946 when her folks took their three children there to start a business, Rose Marie Reid swimsuits. The company proved so successful that by 1950 the Kesslers had moved to Beverly Hills, where Mimi attended El Rodeo School and Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1960. At 18, on finishing her first year at UCLA, she married Michael Nissenson, a friend of her elder brother Rick, and they started a family. In the early 1970s, with three children--Margaret, Elaine and John--they divorced; in 1977 Mimi and her kids moved to Leucadia in North San Diego County, where they lived for three years in a house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which she loved. She also enjoyed her work at La Costa Crystal shop and at Hoehn Motors, a Mercedes Benz dealership where she was among the first women to sell cars. Her second marriage, to Henry Warshow, in 1980, took her and her kids to New York City and a Park Avenue apartment where she remained with Henry, working as his personal assistant in his family textile business, H. Warshow & Sons, long after her children had returned to California. Now known as Miriam, she enjoyed travels with her husband to Switzerland and Africa, among other destinations. After his death in 2015, she returned to California. Mimi, or Miriam, depending on when people knew her, was virtually selfless as a wife and mother, unconditionally devoted to husband and family with complete integrity of purpose and commitment to their wellbeing. She was conversant in Spanish and loved Mexico and Mexican food. She also loved animals, especially her dogs, and was a generous donor to the SPCA, as well as to the Democratic Party, the ACLU and other human rights organizations. Her kindness and generosity, with both her time and her material assistance, her solidarity and sympathy, were above all shared with family and friends. She was predeceased by her youngest child, John, in 1998 at the age of 29. His death was a tragic turning point in her life, but she carried her grief with dignity, courage and a tough equanimity true to the crisis navigator and problem solver she had always been. Her survivors include her daughters, Elaine Kates and Margaret Hayward; her stepchildren Michal Bluestein, Douglas and Rebecca Warshow; her brothers Bruce (and his wife, Joan), Rick and Stephen Kessler; grandchildren Olivia Kennedy, Will Hayward, Sam Hayward, Charlotte Hayward, Jack Parker, Sarah Bluestein and Stephen Bluestein; and great-grandchildren Eleanor Kennedy and Iris Kennedy. A private family memorial is planned.