Ruby Bernstein

1932 - 2016

Ruby Selma Bernstein

April 21, 1932 - July 28, 2016

Ruby Selma Bernstein, long-time Oakland resident, master teacher and grass-roots activist, died July 28, 2016, in San Leandro after a year of declining health. She was 84.

In the lexicon of life, Ruby was an active verb. She challenged and taught everyone -- friends, students, colleagues, those she encountered in a coffee shop or on an airplane, writers she knew from print, politicians she knew in person. The Stanford University graduate often said she got into teaching almost by accident when she decided to earn her credential as an English teacher from San Francisco State University in 1962. By the time she had finally retired in 2011 at age 79, she had been honored as a founding fellow of the Bay Area Writing Project at UC Berkeley, had organized and given hundreds of workshops to K-12 teachers to improve the teaching of writing in California and across the nation, and had taught literature, composition and journalism for half a century. By her own estimate, she had touched 5,000 lives in her classes at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, and at Laney College in Oakland.

Ruby was born in Bakersfield on April 21, 1932, the only child of William and Annabelle Friedman Bernstein. In 1937 the family settled in Santa Maria.

Ruby went from Santa Maria High School to graduate from Stanford University in 1953 with a degree in journalism. She earned a MA in Secondary Education for language arts and social studies from San Francisco State University in 1972.

She started professional life as a part-time reporter for the San Jose Mercury-News. Before settling into a lifetime of teaching, she also worked for the U.S. State Department as a code clerk in Bonn and Paris, and in the public relations office of the California State Bar in San Francisco.

Ruby was appointed to the Oakland Library Advisory Commission in July 2011. She also worked to improve libraries within the Oakland public school system.

Ruby never tolerated sitting still. She travelled the world, campaigned locally for progressive Democratic candidates and ballot measures, spent countless hours in art studios and galleries, and loved theater.

Ruby is survived by cousins: Rita Hammer (Richard) of Hayward; Addie Hutchison (William) of Amherst, NH; Stephen Hammer (Ginger) of Washington, D C; Richard Friedman (Cynthia Bloomfield) of Berkeley; Lori Hutcheson (Don) of Nashua, NH; and Teresa Allen of Oakland. She was predeceased by her parents and cousin Joe Friedman of Oakland.

To read more about Ruby's active life, see her Facebook page, and her short memoirs in past issues of the Bay Area Writing Project's http://digitalpaper.wordpress.com, and her 2007 interview about progressive values at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZwz9YNbZ6w.

There will be a memorial on Sunday, September 18, 2016, at 1 p.m. in the Community Room of the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Avenue, Oakland.

Ruby suggested donations "to the theatres I have so enjoyed", including: Shotgun Players (shotgunplayers.org); and Aurora Theatre Company (auroratheatre.org).