Winifred Gelbaum Oswaks passed away on Sunday June 28, 2026, less than a month shy of her 95th birthday.
“I had a good run,” Winnie said in a final phone call to her adoring granddaughter Molly.
A survivor of breast, lung and skin cancers, it was ultimately metastatic ovarian cancer and its complications that brought Winnie’s story to an end.
Those who knew and loved her felt Winnie to be eternal, with razor sharp wit and an elephant’s memory for the finest details of her long and storied life.
It is an incredible shock and difficult to accept how someone so eclectic could, just like that, be gone.
The only child of Eva Cohen and Joseph Gelbaum, Winnie was born in Newark, New Jersey, on July 26, 1931.
She fell in love at age 16 with a handsome sailor on leave, Harvey Oswaks, and the two exchanged many love letters over the next few years, while she finished high school and he completed his service in the navy.
They were married at the Douglas Hotel on June 1, 1952, and made a home on Long Island, New York, welcoming two sons in the years to follow.
Winnie and Harvey were madly in love and enjoyed New York in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, the shopping and the nightlife in particular, as well as traveling domestically and abroad, always with their signature Louis Vuitton luggage in hand.
When Harvey died in 1985 of non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, Winnie packed up and moved west to join her sons in Los Angeles.
She got a job for some time as a receptionist at Hairtech on Beverly Boulevard, and became the queen of King’s Road Cafe, arriving with full makeup on at 5 a.m. every morning, waiting for the servers to let her inside so she could claim her corner booth table by the window and hold court.
Over the next three-plus decades at King’s Road Winnie made many friends who she stayed close with until her final days, even after relocating in 2023 to Santa Ynez, to be closer to her younger son and daughter-in-law, who oversaw her daily care.
Winnie resided since 2023 in Santa Ynez at Harry’s House, where she made friends and regaled the residents with her stories.
Winnie was a voracious reader and spent her final year plowing through the collected works of the Irish novelist John Boyne.
She loved our country and was a staunch believer in democracy, freedom, equality and justice.
She loved Jo Malone perfume and fine jewelry, and the feel of silk and cashmere between her fingers, but most of all she loved her family.
Winnie is survived by sons Bob (Jane) and Jon; granddaughters Molly (James), Alexandra (Scott), Natasha (Jon), and Katt; and great-grandchildren Oscar, Olive, Noah and Emily.
WWLY