Ralph Dreike
June 16, 1922 - July 17, 2020
Sunnyvale/Mountain View
Ralph Dreike was born Rolf August Dreifuss in Augsburg, Germany the only child of Ludwig and Amalie Dreifuss. Ludwig was a Jewish attorney and WWI German army veteran and Amalie was a Catholic dressmaker. After the Nazis came to power the family was subject to religious persecution, slightly moderated by Ludwig's army service and Amalie's Catholicism. It was a trying time for a young boy, often taunted in school and ultimately flunked by the Nazi instructors. He was then sent to a Catholic Marist boarding school, but soon after the school was taken over by Nazi's and Rolf was expelled.
In 1938 Ludwig arranged for a distant cousin John Altman, an attorney in San Francisco, to sponsor Rolf. Rolf sailed on the U.S.S. Manhattan (perhaps why his favorite cocktail became a Manhattan!) with other refugee children from Hamburg to New York then by train to Oakland which quite surprised him when the Altmans met him there instead of San Francisco. He first lived in the Jewish Homewood Terrace orphanage where he met Warren Hirsch who became a life-long friend, then with a Catholic family, the Poveys whom have stayed in touch throughout his life. Rolf worked diligently to learn American English, spending hours watching movies and practicing as he went to sleep at night, to nearly completely lose his German accent.
He attended Washington High School in San Francisco, then studied chemistry at SF City College. Waiting for the war to begin, he worked as a welder in an Oakland shipyard. He was drafted in 1943. During training he was sent with other German refugees to become naturalized citizens at the federal court in Sacramento, where, beer-fueled he changed his name to Ralph Dreike in case he might be sent to Europe and captured. After attending Oregon State University for a year as part of an Army program to train critical professionals, he was sent to radio training school in El Paso and went on to be a radio technician throughout the Pacific. He ended his deployment as a mess sergeant on Maui where he developed a life-long love of cooking. In 1948 Ralph was reunited with his parents in a devastated Augsburg. (Ludwig was unable to escape the Nazis and was liberated from Theresienstadt concentration camp at the end of the war. He was subsequently appointed mayor of Augsburg, Germany by the allied forces 1945-46. Amalie survived the persecution while being hidden by nuns in a convent). He attended UC Berkeley and UCSF on the GI bill, graduating pharmacy school (as did his friend Warren Hirsch) in 1950. His career began at Bauermann's Pharmacy in San Francisco, becoming a compounding pharmacist at the Palo Alto VA, then at Stanford Hospital for the next 25 years until retirement. In the late 1990's he came out of retirement to work part-time at Kaiser Sunnyvale for 10 more years, which became his happiest working years. He also remained in the Army Reserve, earning a commission while in college and proudly retiring as Lieutenant Colonel in 1975.
He met his wife Ruth Mendel, a German Jewish refugee, at a New Year's Eve party in 1950. Ruth was born in Berlin and had also emigrated from Germany in the 1930's. They married on January 19, 1952 and had six children, raising them in San Francisco until 1962, then in Sunnyvale. Ruth passed away in 2008. Ralph was an incredibly determined man who lived independently until just last year. His favorite activities were buying fresh crab from fishermen on the Half Moon Bay docks, frequenting Dittmer's Wurst Haus in Los Altos, and playing with his Märklin model train layout. A crowning last adventure in life was a week in Augsburg in August 2019 with his four daughters, taking in memories of the city, eating sausages and pretzels, and being interviewed by German television and the Augsburg Jewish Museum as a refugee who although persecuted still held great affection for his homeland. Per life-long patriotic wishes, Ralph will be buried in his U.S. Army uniform at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos (private due to Covid-19), with Ruth. Ralph is survived by his children Philip (Julie), Christopher (Melanie), Marianne (Mohsen Saneinejad), Rosemary (Bernie Mark), Anita (Bill Lischak) and Elizabeth (Courtney Almer) and grandchildren Theresa (Dreike) Staples, Sandra Dreike, Shahin, Sheela and Shauna Saneinejad, Erika, Anna Lai and Ariel Mark, Liam and Abigale Lischak, Isabel and Alyssa Almer.
View the online memorial for Ralph DreikePublished by San Jose Mercury News/San Mateo County Times on Jul. 26, 2020.