Elizabeth Brody

Elizabeth Brody, age 91, died on June 9, at her home in New York City. A retired elder-law attorney and generous donor to social, civic, and cultural organizations, Beth long devoted her skills, energy, and enthusiasm to volunteering for organizations ranging from the New Jersey League of Women Voters to the New Jersey Bar Association and other legal groups to the Radcliffe Alumni Association to her true passion, bicycle advocacy groups. Indeed, after a lifetime of bicycling for transportation and pleasure, Beth enjoyed cycling well into her eighties.

As a young adult in New Jersey, Beth progressed from participating in local and youth hostel bicycling trips, to organizing and publicizing them, to leading them. Since 1998, she was a member and supporter of the East Coast Greenway Alliance, which leads the development of a walking and biking route stretching 3,000 miles from Maine to Florida. In 2003 Beth becoming chair of the East Coast Greenway’s New Jersey committee. In 2005, after the death of her husband, Warren Brody, she moved to New York City and became the leader of the New York committee.

Beth served on the East Coast Greenway’s Board of Trustees from 2005 to 2016. As she recounted in a video posted June 15, 2022 at https://www.greenway.org/stories/supporter-spotlight-elizabeth-brody: “One needed to go back constantly to the various approving agencies, and encourage them, and tell them again about the East Coast Greenway, and why it’s so valuable: ‘support please’ and ‘sign here’ and ‘pass this resolution’ and ‘enable this particular action.’ That all took work – and repeated work. As a member of the Board, which met twice a year somewhere along the route, I have been in every state [and bicycled along] many parts of the Greenway: Maine, Rhode Island, especially New York and New Jersey (where I lived), Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, the Carolinas, and long stretches of Florida. As a result, I met people, and just loved the experience. I have enjoyed very much being part of this movement.”

Beth was born in Chicago on September 17, 1931, to Charlotte Landau and Isaac Jacob Schoenberg, when her father was a Rockefeller fellow in mathematics at the University of Chicago. Her mother, a chemist, was the daughter of the mathematician Edmund Landau and the granddaughter of the Nobel-Prize winning immunologist Paul Ehrlich. Beth’s sister, Beatrice was born in 1937 and died in 2022. After Charlotte’s death and Isaac’s marriage to Dolly van der Hoop (1913-2013), Beth’s half-brother, Michael, was born in 1952; he died in 2023.

While attending Radcliffe College, Beth met her future husband, Warren, when she auditioned for a part in a Chekov play he was directing for the Harvard Drama Society. Immediately after graduating college and Warren’s first year at Harvard Law School, they married and, two years later, moved to New Jersey. Beth became a homemaker and civic volunteer, raising two daughters, Diana and Evelyn. She edited a book on New Jersey government for the League of Women Voters and served on the board of the New Jersey LWV; she obtained an education certificate and substitute-taught in history and English. Inspired by the women’s movement, Beth started Rutgers Law School in 1972. She stayed on to serve for nine years as assistant dean and dean of students before hanging out her shingle as an attorney, eventually specializing in elder law – often bicycling to see clients. Meanwhile, in 1977, Warren Brody was appointed judge of the Union County court, and the following year judge of the superior court of New Jersey. He was assigned to the appellate division in 1982. After three years of service as presiding judge, he retired in 1995.

Beth was a frequent traveler, often with her husband and on dozens of group cycling trips, in the U.S. and abroad. Beth’s deep interest in her fascinating and accomplished European-Jewish family took her on trips – frequently accompanied by her sister, Bea – to Germany, Romania, Israel, Silesia (Poland), the Netherlands, Switzerland, and elsewhere. The reunification of Germany after 1989 resulted in the return to the Landau family of a parcel of real estate that stood in the “no man’s land” east of the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate; Beth used a portion of her recovery to purchase a pied-à-terre on Central Park South, which became her home after Warren died.

A funeral service for Elizabeth will be held Sunday, June 11, 2023 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street, New York, NY 10023.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.riversidememorialchapel.com for the Brody family.