Lillian Ross

1925 - 2020

Lillian Ross died of natural causes in the early morning of Saturday May 30, just short of her 95th birthday on July 16, living to the end independently in her Culver City home of fifty years. As she used to say, she led multiple lives: as the child of immigrants working in a family delicatessen, a schoolteacher and mother, and an author of children's books. In her last years, she was active in Temple Akiba and was a role model and inspiration for how to age. She was a native Angeleno and a graduate of Fairfax High School and UCLA. Beginning her career as a kindergarten teacher at Fairburn Elementary in Brentwood, she returned to full-time teaching, after tending to her pre-school children, to Westminster Elementary in Venice. There, the no-nonsense "Mrs. Ross" would put troubled older children to work helping her pupils. She was an early activist in United Teachers of Los Angeles, and although initially taking up a picket sign to fight for better working conditions, was rewarded by the benefits of Kaiser Permanente health care that served her so well during 40 years of retirement. After teaching, she took writing classes and published four books for children, including Daughters of Eve: Strong Women of the Bible. She often toured classrooms to explain the craft of writing and publishing. Raised in a secular home, she participated in numerous classes in her later years studying the Torah and other Jewish sources.
She was preceded in death by her parents David and Frieda Hammer and her brother Julius Hammer, husband Albert Ellis Ross and subsequent partner Aaron Freeman, and by her son David Paul Ross. She leaves behind son Stephen (Mary Wujek) and daughter Susan Peterson (Mark), granddaughters Jenna Peterson, Emily Peterson (Ryan Birrer), Elizabeth Kinports, and Sara Kinports, great-granddaughter Aisley Birrer, cousins in America, Israel, and Australia, and a warm community of admirers from Temple Akiba and elsewhere. A private memorial will be held in the future. In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts can be made to Temple Akiba in honor of Lillian Ross or to the Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS) Foundation in honor of Lillian Ross, great-grandma to Aisley Ross Birrer.