Cora Weiss, a tireless advocate for peace and a longtime resident of Aquinnah, died on Dec. 8, 2025 She was 91.
Her death came a little over a month after the death of her husband, Peter Weiss, who died on Nov. 3 at the age of 99. The couple were married for 69 years, linked in their work around the world fighting for social justice, and in their lives on the Vineyard, which they visited for the first time on their honeymoon in 1956. They immediately fell in love with the Island, renting a home in Menemsha at first and later moving to Aquinnah.
Each year, on August 6, the couple could be found at the Gay Head Lighthouse, taking part in a Hiroshima Day Vigil. The couple also traveled to Hiroshima and spoke at annual remembrance events there.
“Kofi Annan, who was a great Secretary General of the UN, spoke at the centennial of the Hague Appeal for Peace conference in May of 1999,” Cora said in a 2018 interview with the Gazette. “The conclusion of his extraordinary speech was, ‘don’t despair, don’t be discouraged, and by all means, don’t ever give up. I think we can adopt that as well.”
It was a mantra she dedicated her life to, chairing numerous nonprofit boards and leading many organizations dedicated to the work of peace and helping the powerless find a voice.
Cora served as president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, United Nations representative of the International Peace Bureau, honorary patron and advisor to the Committee on Teaching About the United Nations, and chairman of the board of Downtown Community Television in New York city, to name just a few of the organizations she was affiliated with during her lifetime.
In 2000, she was instrumental in drafting United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which urged for female participation at all levels of governance, and for prevention of violent conflict and the protection of women and girls during violent conflict.
In 2015, the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders established a fellowship in her name.
“It’s for young women from any developing country who want to learn how to implement 1325 locally and nationally,” she said in the 2018 interview with the Gazette.
In the 1960s, the couple focused on protesting the Vietnam War, with Mrs. Weiss an early member of Women Strike for Peace, an organization that worked to ban atmospheric nuclear testing and later focussed on ending the war.
“We had lots of meetings in the barn of our house,” Cora said in the 2018 interview, referring to meetings with activists they held when living in Menemsah, at the Homestead. “And one night Tom Hayden arrived from Vietnam. He and others from the anti-war movement spoke from the hay loft of the barn and that was full of people.”
An obituary in the New York Times, noted that her activist roots started when she was still a young girl, growing up in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., in Westchester County.
“She became an activist early on, helping her mother roll bandages for the Red Cross, taking coffee and doughnuts to young men preparing to go to the front lines of World War II, and knitting clothes for relief efforts. Those experiences inspired her interest in bringing an end to war, she said,” the obituary stated.
The New York Times also reportered on how she helped organize the anti nuclear demonstration that took place in Central Park in 1982.
“She was courageous and brave and patriotic,” Darren Walker, the former president of the Ford Foundation, said in an interview, the New York Times reported.
Each summer Cora and Peter Weiss returned to the Vineyard to both recharge and continue their work of promoting peace around the world.
“Watching the sun set over the Vineyard Sound with our father, family and friends was Cora’s happy place,” her daughter Tamara, a 30-year long resident of Chilmark, told the Gazette.
Cora is predeceased by her husband, Peter, and survived by their three children Judy, Tamara and Danny (Anne Stewart), grandchildren Jules (Emily), Noah (Kelsey), Maria (Gabi), Catherine, (Briana) and Simon, and her former son-in-law Gary.
