ISRAEL-CURLEY, Marcia 1930-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 10, 1930, in NY; died of a stroke, August 17, 2004, in Los Angeles, CA. Businessperson and author. Israel-Curley was the founder of the young women's specialty shop Judy's, which was a major West Coast retail chain. Coming from humble roots on a farm in Sullivan County, New York, she and her mother and sisters had to move to New York City after her father abandoned them; all the family members worked to support each other, and after high school Marcia found work as a model and as a bookkeeper for a dress company in New York. In 1947 Israel-Curley moved to East Los Angeles, where she opened a tiny store on Whittier Boulevard. She called the shop Judy's because the name was short enough to fit on the narrow storefront. After marrying, she and her husband worked on the business together, growing it to fourteen stores by the mid-1960s and to over one hundred stores at its peak. Judy's found success by being one of the first stores to offer clothing exclusively for young women; the clothing included designs created by Israel-Curley and others she had commissioned for her store. With business success came philanthropy, and Israel-Curley was not shy about sharing her wealth. She especially supported the arts, becoming one of the founders of the Los Angeles Music Center and helping to support a number of theaters; she also gave money to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, which used the money to open a new treatment center. A former advisor to the Navy Exchange Service Command, she was awarded the Navy's Medal of Distinguished Service; Israel-Curley also served as chair of President Ronald Reagan's Committee for Small and Minority Business Ownership for six years, and the government of France decorated her with the National Medal of Merit. But as other competitors entered the market, Judy's began to struggle, and in 1989 Israel-Curley sold the chain for thirty-one million dollars; it was sold again in 1993 and is now known by the Rampage name. Highly regarded for tremendous business success, despite the eventual demise of Judy's, Israel-Curley wrote her story down in the autobiography Defying the Odds: Sharing the Lessons I Learned As a Pioneer Entrepreneur (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2004, p. B11.

WWD (Women's Wear Daily), August 19, 2004, p. 19.