Doris Orgel, z”l, a prolific children’s author, died on Aug. 4, 2021, at age 92. She is survived by two sons, Paul and Jeremy Orgel; a daughter, Laura Orgel; 10 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
She moved from New York to Portland in 2019 and lived at Cedar Sinai Park so her daughter could help care for her during her last years.
Born Feb. 15, 1929, in Vienna, Austria, Doris, along with her sister (Lotte Lichtblau, a painter, d. 2013), and her parents, Ernst and Erna Adelberg, escaped Hitler’s regime, arriving in New York City in 1940. Her childhood experiences as Nazism took hold in Vienna form the basis of her 1978 novel, The Devil in Vienna, later filmed by Disney as “A Friendship in Vienna.”
She graduated from Hunter High School as valedictorian, and entered Radcliffe College. There she met Shelley Orgel, (1928-2018), the love of her life, who became a prominent psychoanalyst. She graduated from Barnard College, and they were married in 1949.
Her friend, the artist Maurice Sendak, encouraged her to try writing for children, and illustrated her first three books – translations of 19th century fairytales by Wilhelm Hauff and Clemens Brentano that she had loved as a child. Throughout her career, Orgel continued to translate German books, including Daniel Half-Human, by Daniel Chotjewitz, another Hauff fairy tale, Heart of Stone, Illustrated by the caricaturist David Levine, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and a retelling of Wagner’s Lohengrin.
Her first original book was Sarah’s Room (1963), written in verse and illustrated by Sendak, the first of many for younger readers published in the 1960s and ‘70s. Some (Grandma’s Holidays, The Goodbyes of Magnus Marmalade and Phoebe and the Prince) were whimsically rhyming texts. Others such as Cindy’s Snowdrops, In a Forgotten Place and Whose Turtle reflected her family’s move from Brooklyn to Westport, Conn., with themes of nature and children growing up. In other books, she collaborated with artists Arnold and Anita Lobel, and Edward Gorey.
Moving back to Manhattan, where she lived from 1979 to 2018, Orgel was a staff writer at the Bank Street Writer’s Lab, where she wrote and co-wrote a series of books for beginning readers. In later years, her deep interest in Greek and Roman mythology led her to write We Goddesses (Athena, Aphrodite, Hera) and three related books: The Princess and the God, Ariadne Awake and My Mother’s Daughter.
An outgoing, energetic woman who loved swimming, tennis, travel, music (especially opera), cooking and social occasions, Doris Orgel was loved by her many friends and family for her affectionate, good-natured personality, quick sense of humor, great enthusiasm and warmth.