Jo Ann Bass, matriarch of Miami Beach landmark Joe’s Stone Crab, dies at 94 – Sun Sentinel

Jo Ann Weiss Sawitz Bass, the matriarch of the landmark Joe’s Stone Crab, died Saturday in hospice at her Miami Beach home across the street from her family’s restaurant. She was 94.

Bass helped lead Joe’s Stone Crab, the oldest surviving restaurant in Miami Beach, for decades and into her late 80s. Joe’s predates the incorporation of the city in 1915. That happened two years after Joe’s founding. She worked there even before World War II had ended in 1945.

The restaurant has attracted almost every A-lister through the years, including Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and even the actor who played Hoover in a 2011 movie, Leonardo Di Caprio.

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