Bryna Joan Fireside

Bryna J. Fireside (née Levenberg) died Monday, March 23, 2026, at Roland Park Place, in Baltimore, MD. She was 93.

Bryna was born on May 5, 1932, in Linden, New Jersey to Isador and Rose (Shapiro) Levenberg. She is predeceased by her parents and her older brother, Howard, and Harvey Fireside, her husband of 47 years.

Bryna was a lifelong educator, writer, feminist and advocate for social justice and human rights.

Bryna earned a BA from Rutgers University and a Masters from Cornell. She taught at public schools in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City. In 1959, after a ten-week romance, she married Harvey Fireside, a refugee from Hitler who escaped with his parents from Austria. They lived on Bank Street in Greenwich Village for 10 years, and had a daughter, Leela, and a son, Douglas. They were friends with artists and musicians and educators in the West Village in the 1960s. Bryna taught elementary school and worked at a nonprofit, while Harvey worked as an editor and then as a professor after finishing his PhD. In 1968, they brought their two small children to Ithaca, NY where Harvey had accepted a professorship at the Politics Department of Ithaca College. Ithaca was her beloved home for more than 40 years.

After arriving in Ithaca, Bryna and Harvey joined a circle of Vietnam War protesters who were working with the Jesuit priest and antiwar activist Daniel Berrigan. After a protest burning draft cards in napalm resulted in a criminal conviction, Fr. Dan decided to go underground rather than report for prison. Harvey and Bryna (who was pregnant at the time), harbored Fr. Dan from the FBI in their home and later named their third child Daniel in his honor.

She was a founding member and champion of what would become the alternative educational program at East Hill School. Later efforts to support alternative public education led to the creation of what is now the Lehman Alternative Community School, which all of her children attended.

Bryna’s writing career began when she was in grade school. She wrote up the happenings of her Girl Scout troop and brought it to the local newspaper. Eventually she was given her first paid writing job, writing up the news from the Boy Scouts as well using a pseudonym. She earned $3 per column.

In high school, she ended her Scout gigs and wrote a column called “The Teenager Looks Around” that was syndicated in seven weekly newspapers in New Jersey.

After moving to Ithaca, Bryna would go to New York City where she took writing workshops at the New School for Social Research. Shortly after arriving in Ithaca she became the children’s book reviewer for the Ithaca Times, and was published in national teacher magazines. For several years she reviewed children’s books for The New York Times Book Review.

She published her first fiction book, A Crow For Courage, in 1979. She spent the next decade writing freelance magazine articles and book reviews. She began writing non-fiction books for young adults in 1987 as a coauthor of Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice: Images and Writings, about a feminist peace encampment outside the Seneca Army base in Romulus, NY. Inspired by the protesters, who some critics accused of lacking “proper manners,” Bryna and friend Janet Braun-Reinitz, an artist and civil rights activist who had also moved from New York to Ithaca, formed the “Tasteful Ladies for Peace.” Enlisting other friends and activists from the Ithaca area, the group organized several demonstrations in front of the Army base dressed in white gloves and elegant and tasteful clothes.

The group later reconstituted itself as the Tasteful Ladies for Choice and reprised their roles at Pro Choice rallies and demonstrations.

In 1991 she co-authored the book Special Parents, Special Children (Albert Whitman) with Joanne E. Bernstein about parents with disabilities with non-disabled children. This was followed by Is There a Woman in the House… or Senate (Albert Whitman, 1993). The book profiled 10 pathbreaking women in the US House and Senate. Bryna interviewed all 9 living politicians, in addition to describing the life and impact of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to Congress in 1916.The book was named a “Best Book for the Teenager” by the New York Public Library, and one of the 100 best books for girls by the Women’s Booksellers Association.

She continued writing nonfiction books aimed at young adults for Enslow Publishers and others, on subjects ranging from the legal right to die, the trial of a co-conspirator in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the Haymarket Square riots, the experience of young refugees from Bosnia (with Harvey), non-traditional paths for high school students, and the NYC police shooting death of immigrant Amadou Diallo. Her book Choices for the High School Graduate (Ferguson) is a guide for young people considering a gap year or two, inspired in no small part by her own kids. The book went into five editions. She was a writing instructor and coach for teachers, a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and an advocate in the National Writers Union.

Together Harvey and Bryna helped form the Ithaca chapter of Amnesty International in 1973 that provided visas and a support community for political refugees from Argentina, Chile, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere. Later they joined the Sanctuary movement that helped provide protection for refugees from the US-backed civil wars in Central America.

In 1992, concerned about reports of abusive conditions for immigrants at US detention facilities along the Mexico border, Bryna and Harvey spent several months visiting refugee shelters, migrant aid clinics, and detention facilities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas that was published as an expose for In These Times magazine. This experience inspired the Firesides to start The Border Fund, which for over a decade collected funds and donated toys for the migrant shelters they had visited.

In the midst of the war that emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bryna and Harvey learned of the dire conditions of Bosnian college students, often from families of mixed heritage and religious backgrounds, who fled fighting and were living in refugee camps or in urban war zones. Bryna became a board member of the nonprofit Fellowship on Reconciliation that worked to help the students and get them to safety in other countries. Bryna and Harvey formed the Ithaca Bosnian Student Project with other Ithaca residents. The Project brought several students to the Ithaca area where they received free housing and support and were able to continue their educations at local colleges and universities.

Bryna and Harvey were enthusiastic supporters of the arts in Ithaca, with season tickets to local theaters, concert series, and events. They remained loyal supporters and attendees of Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires since the institutions were founded.

Bryna’s final book was Private Joel and the Sewel Mountain Seder, (2008, Kar Ben), a work of historical fiction for children detailing the experiences of a Jewish Union soldier and his comrades during Passover in the US Civil war.

At the request of the family of a Jewish Cornell University student who had died in Ithaca but couldn’t find a burial location, Bryna and Harvey joined with other friends and created a Jewish burial society in Lakewood Cemetery. They jokingly referred to this as the “Alternative Jewish Underground.” The burial society group went on to establish what became Temple Tikkun v’Or.

A few years after Harvey passed away from cancer in 2008, Bryna moved to Roland Park Place, an assisted living campus in Baltimore, MD, with her cat Josie. She was very lovingly cared for by the staff and medical professionals at Roland Park and the family is very thankful for this welcoming community.

She is deeply missed by her children and their families, Leela Ruth Fireside and Patrick Choiniere, Douglas Leonard Fireside, Daniel Ephraim Fireside and Lisa Rivera, and her grandchildren, Ella Fireside, Quinn Fireside, Ethan Fireside, Noah Choiniere, Ariela Choiniere, Ramón Rivera Fireside, and Saul Ulises Rivera Fireside. She is also missed by her nieces Dana and Karen Levenberg and their families, and many friends and co-conspirators in all her endeavors.

Funeral Arrangements are being handled by Lansing Funeral Home. The internment ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. Friday, March 27, at Lakeview Cemetery followed by a memorial service at 2:30 p.m. at Congregation Tikkun v’Or, 2550 North Triphammer Road, Ithaca.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Southside Community Center of Ithaca, or Casa Marianella, a refugee shelter in Austin, TX.