Joe Weisman; Carpet Manufacturer, Leader in Jewish Charities

Joe Weisman, a highly successful Los Angeles carpet manufacturer who in his retirement years became a tireless worker for Jewish charities, died Tuesday night in his Los Angeles home.

His son Steven said Weisman had been suffering from cancer and apparently died of cardiac arrest. He was 81.

A three-time president of the Jewish Homes for the Aging of Greater Los Angeles, the Denver-born Weisman came to Los Angeles with his family when he was 14.

Originally he had wanted to devote his life to the law, but after practicing for six years during the Depression after graduation from USC Law School, Weisman found that “the only clients I could get were people who couldn’t pay me.”

He joined the family carpet business--his father also was to be a president of the Jewish Homes--and the two of them established Century Carpet Mills.

Until his retirement in 1979 Weisman was an industry leader, founding the Carpet Manufacturing Assn. of the West.

He and his wife, Etta, lived for years in Beverly Hills where he was active in municipal affairs. He also active as a Mason and was a past master of the Westgate Lodge.

After his post-retirement election to the Jewish Homes presidency in the early 1980s, he presided over one of the most ambitious fund-raising projects in the group’s then 70-year history: the 70-bed Max Factor Family Foundation Nursing Building.

Serving three terms as Weisman did was unprecedented, said Sheldon Blumenthal, chief executive officer of the two campuses in Reseda where more than 900 people currently live.

“But we needed Joe’s fund-raising skills badly enough,” he said, “to change the rules.”

Blumenthal remembered Weisman as a “person who had no enemies . . . whom residents could call with any of their complaints. . . .

“He was one of the few lay people we ever had that the residents felt (was) one of them.”

In addition to his wife and Steven, Weisman is survived by another son, Michael, and a daughter, Lynn.

A funeral service will be held today at 1 p.m. at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, where Weisman served on the board for many years.