Laura Pels

Laura Pels, a leading benefactor of nonprofit theater through the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, which has helped a multitude of companies stage plays in New York City and beyond, died on Wednesday May 3 2023 at a hospital near her home in Manhattan. She was 92. Ms. Pels forged relationships with leading playwrights like Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter. Josette Jeanne Bernard was born on May 1, 1931, in Saint-Vivien-de-Monségur, a village near Bordeaux, France. At 25, she moved to London to study English and met Adolphe Meeus, a translator for the United Nations. They married in 1956. After living for a time in Ethiopia, the couple moved to New York City and divorced in the mid-1960s. She married Donald A. Pels in 1965. A communications executive, he took control of Lin Broadcasting in 1969 and served as its chairman and president for the next 20 years. Ms. Pels later took control of the foundation that now bears her name in a divorce settlement with Mr. Pels. Mr. Pels invested heavily in cellular communications and in 1989, McCaw Cellular bought a controlling interest in Lin in a deal valued at more than $3 billion. Mr. Pels’s personal profit was estimated at nearly $175 million. The Pelses filed for divorce in 1993, and Ms. Pels became the foundation’s leader. (Mr. Pels died in 2014.) In addition to her daughter Juliette J. Meeus, she is survived by another daughter, Valerie A. Pels; a son, Laurence, who is on the foundation’s board; and four grandchildren.