Dr. Leta Weiss Marks

Dr. Leta Weiss Marks – educator, activist and writer – died of complications following spinal surgery Friday, July 25, 2025 at Yale New Haven Hospital, with her four children by her side. Leta was born in New Orleans on February 25, 1932 to Leon Charles Weiss, Sr. and Caroline Dreyfous Weiss.

Leta attended Isadore Newman School in New Orleans, where she developed her life-long love of tennis, graduating in 1949. During the summers, when she was not at camp in Maine, she had free range of the swamps and bayous of Kiskatom, the family retreat across Lake Pontchartrain, where her father taught her to fish and shoot. She graduated in 1951 from Bradford Junior College in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and, in 1953, Connecticut College for Women in New London. While at Connecticut College, she met a young Hartford lawyer, Albert J. Marks, Jr., best known as Alby. He was smitten; she fell in love. They married in New Orleans in 1953.

Leta and Alby shared a love of tennis and a commitment to civic engagement. They had four children. In 1961, while raising her young children, Leta obtained the first of two Master’s Degrees from Trinity College, writing her thesis on Montessori advocate Dorothy Canfield Fisher. She obtained her second Master’s from Trinity in 1983 and a Doctorate in literature in 1994 from the University of Connecticut. In 1997, Leta published her doctoral thesis, producing Time’s Tapestry: Four Generations of a New Orleans Family (LSU Press), a creative non-fiction account of her Alsatian Jewish family’s life in New Orleans.

In 1969, Leta began her twenty-year tenure as an English teacher at Bloomfield High School, where she was also coach of the girls’ tennis team. Following that, she taught for many years as an adjunct professor of literature and writing at the University of Hartford. After attending the Connecticut Writing Project Summer Institute, she conducted writing workshops for teachers and, later, taught memoir-writing courses.

Leta was a competitive tennis player, playing at Tumblebrook Country Club and, later, at the Hartford Tennis Club. After she was no longer physically able to play tennis, she maintained a weekly schedule of Pilates and personal training, ensuring she had the stamina to maintain her breathtakingly active life. In her 90s, she was: on the Boards of her beloved Town and County Club and her condominium association; a participant in book groups, a current events discussion group and a film discussion group; and a member of several communities of friends who gather regularly. Earlier, she was co-president of Quaker Lane Cooperative Nursery School, a member of the Governor’s Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee, a founder and on the advisory board of the Charter Oak Cultural Center, a founder of Congregation Beth Israel’s Social Justice Committee and an active Connecticut College and Bradford Junior College alumna, among many other civic activities.

Passionate about the arts, Leta has volunteered as a docent at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art for the past twenty years, just this year achieving emeritus status. The Wadsworth was truly her happy place. She relished her tours, especially for elementary school students. She wrote thoughtful analyses of works of art and traveled with the docents to visit museums throughout the U.S. and Europe. Throughout her adult life, she attended performances of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, TheaterWorks, Hartford Stage and Real Art Ways, as well as broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. There were annual trips to Tanglewood with a large group of good friends, sometimes getting there by bicycle, sitting on the lawn and critiquing others’ picnics. She always looked forward to her attendance at Jacob’s Pillow dance performances and the Hill-Stead Museum Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. She introduced her children and grandchildren to the wonders of art, architecture, music and theater.

Leta loved New Orleans and took her family there annually to visit her mother, aunts and uncle. Throughout her life, she maintained New Orleans food traditions, including a cup of French Market drip coffee every morning. In recent years, she cooked red beans and rice for her family on the day after Thanksgiving. Although a New England resident from the age of 17, she never quite lost her southern accent.

Leta was always up for an adventure, learning to scuba dive in her 60s, so she could more fully explore coral reefs in Mexico. She loved wine, martinis, dancing, entertaining and conversation. She had an eye for beauty, creating beautiful flower gardens and arrangements, and was always smartly and fashionably turned out. She traveled the world with friends and family.

Following in the tradition of her aunts and uncle, who fought for civil rights in New Orleans during the 1960s, Leta was politically active her whole adult life, a member of the League of Women Voters and a card-carrying ACLU member. In recent years, she registered voters and moderated debates for local candidates. There was no topic or cause too controversial or challenging for her to take on. In the 1960s, she participated in the League of Women Voters’ early recommendation that the United States normalize relations with China.

Leta made new friends in every decade of her life. The outpouring of affection and admiration for her in this difficult time has been comforting to her children.

Above all, Leta cherished her four children and their spouses, her ten grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren, hosting them at her house, visiting them no matter where in the world they were living, remembering every birthday and carrying on her mother’s tradition of gathering together every five years for a family reunion.

Leta was predeceased by her parents, her sister Betty (Elizabeth Parnes) and brother Bubby (Leon Weiss Jr.) and their spouses, Leo and Pat, her husband, Alby, and her friend Daniel Lahn. She leaves her four children and their spouses, Jonathan (Daniela), Richard (Jennifer), Catherine (William) and Alan (Kathleen), her former daughter-in-law, Patricia; her ten grandchildren and their spouses, Sarah (Benjamin), Zoe (Matthew), Jeremy (Jess), Hannah (Andrew), Rachel (Scott), Emma, Jonah, Jacob, Elijah and Tania; her twelve great-grandchildren, James, Madelyn, Orli, Leora, Jack, Ingrid, William, Emeri, Elijah, Felix, Olivia and Miles; nieces and nephews; many, many dear friends; and her beloved dog, Lizzy.

A memorial service for Leta will take place at Congregation Beth Israel on Wednesday, July 30th at 10:00 am. The temple is located at 701 Farmington Ave., West Hartford CT 06119. A reception will follow the service at The Town and County Club, 22 Woodland St., Hartford CT 06105. Interment will be private. Anyone wishing to make donations in her honor is encouraged to contribute to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Charter Oak Cultural Center, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Real Art Ways, TheaterWorks, Hartford Stage or any charity of their choice.