Farewell to the ‘Birdman’
Nate Lava, whose origami birds delighted the young at West Orange JCC, dies at 80

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

I got a call a few nights ago from a member of my synagogue. “The Birdman died. I thought you might want to know,” he said.

The Birdman. Yes, I thought. I had wondered what had happened to Nate Lava. For eight years, the Westfield resident had greeted preschoolers as they arrived at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC in West Orange every Monday and Wednesday morning with hundreds of small, brightly colored origami birds.

“Take two,” he would say to those who couldn’t decide which was their favorite. “Let me show you how it works.” The children would slide toward him. “You hold it by the belly, here. Then you pull the tail like this.” And just like that, the wings moved and the bird appeared to be in flight.

Two years ago, my own children were among those who would rush to see him.

The birds still fill the side pockets of my car. Each one represented so much love, I could never bring myself to clear them away.

Lava gave away 50,000 to 60,000 birds each year, nearly 300 each day, he told NJ Jewish News in a 2003 interview. He had picked up the art of paper folding in college, and it eventually became his passion. He folded birds in the army during World War II, and he folded them at the liquor store he ran in Hillside. But it wasn’t until he retired 14 years ago and his wife’s death from cancer three years later that Lava began sharing his avian creations regularly with the youngest members of the community. By 2003, he would spend six or eight hours a day folding birds for the children. “I love what I get from these children. It’s worth all the money in the world,” he told NJJN that year.

I noticed this year when I started dropping my daughter off again that the Birdman was no longer there. What happened to him, I wondered. I missed his presence and the whimsy he brought to our day.

Now I know. Sixteen months ago, Lava, who suffered from diabetes, could no longer manage on his own, according to his son, Larry, of West Orange. He was admitted to Daughters of Israel in West Orange. And while he could no longer get to the JCC, he kept making birds. Some people from the JCC went to visit him, Larry said, and when they came, the Birdman gave them birds to bring back to the children. In March, 2005, he had a leg amputated. In September, he died.

At his funeral on Sept. 16, family members tossed handfuls of the origami birds onto his coffin as it was lowered into the earth.

Nate Lava is survived by two sisters, Rae Robbins of Bradley Beach and Dorothy Fern of Pennsylvania; his children, Larry of West Orange, Stuart of Huntington Beach, Calif., and Diane Wertheim of San Diego; and five grandchildren.

Donations in his memory may be made to the American Diabetes Association or the American Cancer Society.

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.

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