Allgemeine Zeitung - 3/11/2009

Allgemeine Zeitung Article
San Francisco Chronicle

Sweet, loving, and caring Ruth will dearly be missed by us. Ruth will always be in our hearts and thoughts for as long as we live. We have warm memories of her, and great visits that we cherish.

Ruth & Sanford, forever in love

St Francis words....that Ruth lived by

What Ruth Meant to Me

      Ruth is mourned by many people, not the least of which is her extended family and circle of friends.  She leaves behind two sons and their families, who remember her as being tireless in her support, love and compassion throughout their lives.  Sanford was her one true love. They met in 1943 at college and were married for 63 years.  Ruth struggled at the end of her life, to stay alive to support her ailing husband.  This is so in keeping with who Ruth was as a person…always putting the needs of others first.  Hers was a life of service and dedication to the betterment and support of others’ lives.

      The last time I saw Ruth was just a few days before her graduating out of this life.  She was in the hospital, in terrible pain.  What moves me so deeply, is that Ruth, in excruciating pain, and knowing she is at the very end of her life because she made the choice to terminate dialysis, found the time and energy to give me her support.  In her last conversation with me, I heard not a mention of herself, not a mention of her pain.  She was saying good-bye to me; she was taking her leave, for all time.  She told me: “You are a good woman; I am so glad that Craig found you.”  She told me that the important thing in life is to enjoy life to the very fullest. 

      10 days later at her funeral and wake, both of her sons, Mark and Kim, stood to speak to us of their beloved mother, Ruth.   Kim captured the essence of Ruth in explaining that she had the ability, and she did this on a regular basis, to look into the very depths of your very soul.  She would see where you were hurting, and she would tell you what you needed to hear, in order to heal your life, to resolve your current difficulties.  You would come away amazed at the insight of this woman.  A great example of this is when my husband, Craig was in rabbinical school in Israel, in the early 1980’s.  He had won a scholarship with all expenses paid by his congregation and thus felt very obligated to follow through on this mission.  However, after spending some time in war-torn Israel, he came to the realization that this was not the right path for him.  To change course at this time was a momentous decision and Craig felt he would be letting down a lot of people.  Of all the family members, who did Craig turn to for guidance? It was Ruth.  Craig called Ruth long distance from Israel, all the way to California, in hopes of gaining some clarity in this terrible dilemma.  Although Ruth did not tell Craig what decision to make, she validated his feelings and let him know it was Ok to make the choice he was leaning towards.  In addition, she gave him that grain of insight that only Ruth could see…she told him that if he did not follow through with this particular course of action in his life, “you will have to do something difficult”.  Craig is still working on that right now, and he feels it was exactly what he needed to hear.  Only Ruth could have come up with this gem of wisdom. 

     This brings us with what we are left with today….which is the loss of Ruth.  There are no words adequate to describe what Ruth meant to each and every one of us, her family members.  Ruth was the heart of compassion.  She was a lion in the cause of Justice.  Her departure leaves a tremendous hole in our lives. 

            

Ruth & Sanford, young and in love

Ruth wants to know everything.....

Biography of a Spring - Berkeley 2003

It's Friday, January 3, a sunny afternoon, which registered 67 degrees Fahrenheit for the out of doors on my car's interior thermometer, as  I stepped out unto multicolored leaves still falling from wonderful, gigantic trees on McGee near Hpkins Street, just a few steps from the entrance to the Berkeley Horticultural Nursery.  As i came around the trunk onto the sidewalk I noticed a rose Camellia hidden on a very low branch of a bush at the realty office. Down the street after having bought some chicken for our dinner, there was a baby in a buggy on the sidewalk watched over by its father.  I guessed the must have been strolling in this lovely air because the baby's cheeks vibrantly matched the color of the recently discovered Camellia blossom.  Getting back into my car, I thought about the lone question I missed yesterday on the Department of Motor Vehicles license renewal exam:  Which road is likely to be more icy: at an intersection, or through a tunnel, or over a bridge?  Not an experience to be had here on such a spring like day!

On the way home up marin Avenue I again looked for my trusted first sign of spring,  a Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles) on the corner of Shattuck avenue, but there was no blossom.  An then, just a few feet away from Marin and Euclid Avenues, there was a Quince covered with tomato red blossoms.  I had never discovered this bush on the Euclid side of the Bernard Maybeck house in previous springs.

So the New Year, quietly as always, holds such abundance of hope and promise of all I can not know.  In contrast, there is my fear of war and the mpact of inequity of income for people in our land and elsewhere, alsmost wherever I pay attentin.  But today I am filled with the hope and promise of our future which in its inevitable course shall also bloom.

On the following morning when I got up from a very long newspaper reading breakfast, discouraged as I frequently find myself shaking my head during the last year, I saw one very full, ruffled pink Camellia on a bush which we call Mona,, after the person who gave us the little plant over forty years ago.  One blossom on a bush now twenty five feet tall.

These days have been unusually warm and clear.  The strong winds have made for this clarity having the past two sunsets going from a softly colored horizon to a deep orange and red quickly fading into darkness with a sliver of a new moon in the western sky.  While working a bit in the patio just now, I began to see many buds of blossoms to come.  Somehow the sound of the German equivalent for bud, 'Knospe' feels more promising to my ear;  it suggest a forthcoming because its sound comes from deep in the throat, deep inside of me.  The deciduous Magnolia plant put into the ground over forty years ago and now grown into a very good sized tree, shows three softly pink beginnings of blossoms.  Just a few weathered brown leaves are left after the wind had blown the remaining fall leaves into the swimming pool.

It's Wednesday, the eight.  I noticed three Star Magnolias in full bloom on my way down to Solano Avenue and a n additional one on that street.  And now at home just across the pool the three blossoms have not opened more since yesterday.  The sky is filled with thousands of small clouds - the Bay not visible because of a covering of fog or mist.  So it's grey today and it feels as thought it might rain soon.  The bright, bright yellow oxalis is beginning to be evident at edges of various gardens.  It is so beautiful.  I don't know how it became to be designated as a weed urging to be removed at the height of blooming.

No, no!  It does not look like spring, but the promise is offered in very small doses.  There is a Hebrew prayer of gratitude to be said at the first sign that year of anything in nature.  I can't say it.  I no longer know it.  Perhaps my awareness of the new and the first has been sharpened by the practice of that oft repeated prayer of gratitude when I was young.  The new, the first is still astounding.

On Hearst Avenue, half a block west of MLK Way, the following morning I saw a narcissus with five stocks of several blooms in a patch of unkept grass just next to the street.  These were white with a yellow ruffled center and dark brown stamen at the heart of things.  So pure and so perfect and so robustly clear in form, this flower of spring.  Regrettably I could only imagine the sweet odor I would take in had I not been afraid to bend down losing my balance with both of my hands full so I could not hold on to a fender of a parked car.  Just a foot away there was a discarded Christmas tree ready for the special pick up the city provides every year in early January.  The cut where the tree had been severed from its roots looked absolutely fresh, as did the tree no longer of human use.

Later at my favorite Westbrae Nursery, Bbby and the others agreed with my observation that spring is very early this year.  And still later on the local television news they explained that the warmth of El Nino is raising the termperature in our area and will continue to bring rain, off and on, probably into march.

On this Sunday morning we awakened to sunlit tops of all the huge pine and redwood trees in our neighborhood  their dark green tops were painted with the gold of morning.  And when I moved close to the north windows of our bedroom, there was the first large light, pink Camellia visible from its back, the face turned away from the house toward the light.  This blossom reminds me of Sanford's Edna McDonald's visit here so many ears ago.  She and her sister were on theiir way to Hawaii coming from their winter Rhode Island.  This Camellia was covered with blossoms then;  they both spent many minutes again and again just looking and taking in the beauty.  Since then, I can no longer take these blooms fro granted.

A sun drenched January 15, Wednesday morning!  Out of my study window the first three star magnolia blossoms are all rained out bu t now there are almost too many to count looking more robust.

Yesterday's discovery was the first plum tree filling with pink blossoms on Monterey Avenue near Hopkins street.  The only one so far.  Soon Berkeley will be filled with these flowering trees.  in early February 1945 when I firs came here for a day's visit at International House where I would be living,  I saw a row of them new Dwight Way and Piedmont!  Many years later, jokingly, I began to call their prevalence "Berkeley Pink" also referring to the left orientation of Berkeley politics.  When in full bloom, thse flowering trees are almost too much to behold - often have I attempted to photograph them in many of their locations, but their brightness always faded into with on the photographs.

What I meant to say is that I fell in love with Berkeley that day:  With the blooming plum trees, the ups and downs of the strets, with the colorful people all walking on them,  the great architectural variety and size of homes, the lack of perfected gardens, the new views of th Bay from every street corner.  I was on my own.  And in my own.

During the last intervening weeks I sincerely hoped spring would hold back.  I could not get myself to the computer.  I recall that Thursday 2 weeks ago:  driving down Marin Avenue the Bay was blue, Angel Island was blue, Mount Tmalpais was blue, San Francisco and the ocean beyond were blue and the sky was a lighter blue.  All blue and very clear as I was driving in the bright morning sun.  The following morning Sanford lost his balance and fell on his back on the very blue tiled floor of our bathroom.  For days from then, we were able to get an Xray of the hip and the pelvic area.  Nothing is broken, but his replaced hip joint is badly bruised causing a terribly intense pain.  Time is on his side, so is excersizing and moving frequently with his walker.  And his is much better by now.

So now I can tell that the quince is blooming on the corner of Shattuck and Marin.  The pink plum trees are to be seen in the most marvelous places each day becoming more fully pink.  The snowdrops in our neighbor's untended garden are flourishing.  There is a yellow narcissus on the corner of marin and Creston.  And directly out from the study window our own Star Magnolia is moving into a completely vain spectacle with hundreds of blossoms.  All other pink-purple Magnolias everywhere are in full bloom while ourse, true to the colder location on top of the Berkeley Hills, has one first blossom today.  The gigantic, three story trees of that kind in front of the modern office builindg on Martin Luther King Way and Center street are magnificent, especially since a hideous 'modern' metal sculpture in front of them was luckily removed.  In our patio are patches of perfuming Violets;  and in the deer proof garden the Wallflowers (Erysimum) are blooming from very strong plants which came from English seeds, planted in memory of my grandmother's garden.

All of the above while children are playing soccer in the center of the Martin Luther King Junior High School track looking like lovely blossoms themselves in their colorful shirts as I slowly walk around them - and while my president hurries toward a war in Iraq.  e is 'sick and tired of waiting' for Saddam to comply.  Waiting is what most of life is about: waiting and perhaps, altering expectations.  And noticing ever present change.  And receiving the unexpected.  As I walked out from the track onto the sidewalk, a stranger said to me 'Isn't this the most beautiful spring day' with a smile just beaming on his face.  At the end of January, I was thinking a silent thank you.  Talking in the warm sun, I reflected on the bitter cold that very moment in New York, so far away, where Kim and his family live.  He surely must have run this track in the late sixties during the time the school changed its name from Garfield to Martin Luther King in memory of him and his assasination.  hat tumbles my thoughts to a late spring day 198 iin Tel Aviv, Israwel when I saw a photo of Martin Luther King onthe front page of a Hebrew newspaper for sale at a stand on a busy street.  I of course, could not read Hebrew text and was thrilled because I imagined that President Johnson had sent King to Vietname for peace negotiations.  Soon I would learn to discard my optimistic mood and know of Referend King's murder, and later that evening I walked to the American Embassy where we all sat together for a long time in horrified silence.  Just the previous day, my mother and I had walked by fields of spring wild flowers in Northern Israel boding for happier days ahead in this land now at peace.  And in the world.

On this last January morning driving along Euclid Avenue,  the pink plum trees had exploded into bloom; eometimes one, then two or three in a row along the street or in hidden corners with pine trees which are lusciously green or near barren trees or gracing a worn, old house.  Or two young trees just planted.  Later on Rose Street almost near San Pablo Avenue there was one full bloom adjacent to a maple, I think, which was fully covered with dark, reddish brown fall leaves, giving witness of our very mild winter.  

I musn't forget to note how green it is; on the dirt road below our house and our lawn and in every old crack in our streets.  And in Tilden Park with it's two gigantic Acacias in full sharp yellow bloom just north of Sunset Lane.  And just beyond on a very green slope down from Wildcat Canyon Road I saw the first white, wild Plum tree in full delicate glory.  Into February now, the third, up from our garbage can in back of the house the white Plum tree put into the earth after our house was built is just beginning to show its blooms.  All the trees which we planted from one gallon cans are so wonderfully formed and big and strong.  Even nw I can see mark at eight and Kim at six carrying these tiny, staked, straight trees to Sanford to dig into our very barren, empty hill property all around our newly built home in the fall of 1960.

So much is touched by spring but still it looks like winter because of the large, old, deciduous trees everywhere have not sprouted this year's light green leaves.  But the pines are blooming!  I can tell by the fine, yellow dust on the tables and chairs outside - and a few extra sneezes.  The light of day begins earlier and goes away in a marvelous blaze a little later now.  Tonight from our bedroom window I was almost encircled by the hues of glowing red to softer and softer shades of pink and orange from the southwest Peninsula to norhteast above San Pablo Bay.  

I cannot say

which is which:

the glowing 

plum blossom is

the spring night's moon.

Iumi Shikibu

I did not really forget: forget-me-nots;  I just did not expect to see them this early and in an entirely new place by the big rock which keeps cars from driving over that corner of our lawn.  So clear and blue surrounding the stem of the Redbud (Cercis) which as struggled, bend over the rock and is still in winter's rest.  Small plants of Forget-me-nots are all over this garden;  they are the offspring of two plants we brought home many years ago from a visit tothe Calvin's ranch in the hills east of Healdsburg.  When these bright blossoms go to seed, they stick to one's shoes and clothing and skin, so they get a free ride to other areas: not to be forgotten.

Half of February I have spent in anxiety over the impending ware.  Half of February the Berkeley soil and the gentle weather have spent bringing blossoms ever more in greater abundance.  The Forsythia in our garden has been blooming for more than two weeks.  Not nearly as fully as the ones will in New York a month and a half later.  At the end f March in 1986 I saw a Forsythia shrub completely covered with its small yello blossoms on its bare branches on a corner of Kim and Maureen's Pacific Avenue in Broklyn.  So I think of it as Joel's birthday flower because it bloomed when Joel was just a few days old.

Looking out of our bedroom window from the study I see masses of the pink Camellias now.  The are crowned by a few, giant Camellia Reticula Chang Temple blossoms with many buds ready to open any minute.  And waking this moring through the west window I found the pink-purple magnolia and white, tinged in soft pink blooms of the wild Plum tree having opened during the night.  I wait for this generous beauty all year and now observe too greedily.  The wild Plum tree is now taller than our hosue.  When i was buying plants at the Thornhill Nursery in 1960 for our barren garden, the owner asked me whether I wanted a wild Plum tree.  I gratefully accepted this little tree, no taller than my hand, which he dug out of the middle of the path where we were walking.  I planted it far too close to the edge of our driveway where it has thrived for all these years also bearing fruit from which I made a great, tart jelly, in summers past.  

On some streets it looks as though the pink plums are like a contagious disease - they appear in one garden after another.  Sometimes tumbling a whole block or two.  I have never seen so many in neighboring sities like Albany or Oakland or Alameda.  If Ii recognize it as a tree which does so well here in early, early spring - surely, others do too and have kept planting them over the many years.  A new neighbor has planted a little one a half blck from the end of our driveway on Sunset Lane.  Often the blackish brown trunks of older trees are gnarled and their blooming crown is always an interesting shape.

In the patio, the rain made the King Alfred Daffodils bent down to kiss the violets;  these showy daffodils come back year after year.  They are not my favorite by far but they always return.

On this President's day weekend there have been demonstrations for peace all over Europe and in the US.  in our coastal, large cities.  The british ambassador to the US commented that Tony Blair is a leader and not a follower of his people; yet, the mayor of London welcomed this largest political gathering in two thousands of years of the city.  And our president affirmed the right of people to demonstrate in our democracy without addressing the substance of the demonstrations ("like listening to a focus group to form policy").  Oh, the contrast between the constant beautiful gifts of my early spring and those who govern me.

I think often about the commnt which Jonas Solk made:  From now on evolutions will be by the way of human beings.  How careful and caring we must be: in our intended consequences and all those we did not or, perhaps, could not intend.

There is a big snow storm back east;  the family's driveway was cleared but White Birch Drive, their street to rest of the world is not passable.  Kim was playing in Massachusetts and then planned to teach at Berklee School of Music; I don't know how he will get home in the aftermath of the blizzard.  And here the Star Magnolia is letting go, ant its tired blossoms have completely covered the walk by the pool - our 'snow'.  The old Santa Rosa Plum is in bloom today, while the Satsuma, usually earlier,  seems to be showing leaves with blossoms this year.  That is a new.  An it is also new and so welcome, Sanford walked all day without the use of his walker - to the day, one month after he fell!

Global warming is here if not under two feet of snow on the east coast.  Azaleas, very large ones, are in complete bloom on Vistamont and elsewhere in these Berkeley Hills.  The pink plums are dropping their blossoms rapidly to be replaced by the dark reddish brown leaves of these flowering trees.  I picked some narcissus today for the living room.  And looking at the masses of wallflowers in the deer proof garden, it occurred to me that these flowers bloomed in my Grandmother's garden in warm summer days;  here they have been going right ahead since the middle of January.  In the heat of summer they had a stronger perfum, I remember now.  No garden is sweeter for me then  - and now.

The past weekend our deciduous magnolia - sometimes called tulip tree - came into full bloom beneath the wild plum.  Mark, who was here for three days mending the south side of the hose, stood under the magnolia and looked up into the blossom and said it is like having a surreal experience.  It is so beautiful.  The driveway is now bordered with 'brides' of white blossoming plum trees.  And after a light rain during the night, the skies are very blue.

I have alwas liked Scotch Broom and spent many years thinking it was a native plant.  It is showing its bright yellow color here and there throughout Berkeley gardens, sometimes cut into a hedge, other, as a freely shaped shrub.  Some people have totally eliminated the Broom from their garden and others actually plant it or let it grow when it migrates onto their property.  It is so prevalent in California, that is might be called a native, but some very particular botanist knew it was brought into the state years and years ago.

Inevitably, both my Berkeley spring and my administration's ware plans with Iraq move on:  I find it hard to keep the beauty of spring in mind when I see my adopted country losing its soul.  As if called by the certainty of nature, the Bush administration moves ahead as surely as spring.  Yet spring is not governed by advise and consent nor by International law and associations.  Bush may believe his views are right b the laws of nature.  Or God, on whose side he believes himself to exist:  "We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them.  God is at work in world affairs calling for the United States to lead a liberating crusade in the Middle East; this call of history has come to the right country."   Before February passes, I want to remember The New Yorker magazine's Valentine cover of a United States GI sitting in full desert colored garb on a similarly painted tank with guns and planes pointed.  All is the color of sand.  He holds in his hand a card of a red heart.

It is february 27th.  early this morning i discovered we had a light rain during the night and the plum blossoms covered the driveway.  A very small rivulet of the rain had run through the blossom snow leaving its mark on the dark asphalt.  And the Redbud still in winter sleep had caught lots of descending plum blossoms on its barren branches.  The sun rays were coming through the trees as I went to the mail box to get this morning's newspapers.  All was beautifully serene.  Ant I was grateful, still and again.

In the bright noon sun after I let my poetry class, on Rose street below Martin Luther King Way,  I noticed that a several block long row of pink plums were leafing until I passed the last two still in full bloom.  Everything looked just washed by last night's rain.  So did the bakers and sales clerks at the ACME Bakery on San Pablo.

Every plum tree at our 800 Woodmont Avenue is blooming except one.  It shows not a sign of life.  On the first day of March, two days ago, we cut a few branches which would normally show blossoms.  The branches were dead.   Last summer the tree was filled with wonderful plums.  No hint of its impending demise.  I planted the little bare root tree more than twenty years ago.  Now the tree has turned into wood, dead wood.  How sad.  In more than forty years here we have taken part in the coming and going of nature.  And still it is sad to witness life ending for a loved tree.

On the way across town, my eyes received several new spring gifts.  Clumps of Call Lilies are blooming everywhere, especially in spots not touched by gardeners' hands for a long while.  The same holds true for patches of old fashioned, cream colored Freesias.  in a front yard of an older house, I saw a combination of California Poppies and Freesias.  narcissus and Daffodils are everywhere now.  Ceanothus, deeply blue or lighter are flowering here and there.  And on the way up toward the Lawrence Hall of Science, there is a lot of Lupin in full bloom on the hills already.  All these are early markers of a mild winter and sunshine more intense every day.  It is almost impossible for me to belie e that our family back east is still dealing with a cold winter - I want to send all our glory to them right now!

It does look like spring now!  The tall trees along many of our streets are sprouting bashful, light green leaves.  And some trees are fully green already covering the sky and giving that block a very new look.

And a thousand feet down from our house there is a Redbud, a California native, in full magenta bloom on its bare branches.  On coming home, our Redbud looked as though it was about to burs; as noted previously, we are late in everything up here.

On Thursday of this past week our president held his well rehearsed, somber press conference.   is bemused, condescending smiles were gong - so was his quick temper.  As senator Byrd said the following morning " He looked like someone who isn't listening anymore."  He showed what he decided forever ago, that we will declare war on Iraq.  Besides bombs, we'll drop food and medical supplies.  H has deprecated the suffering of those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001 by connecting that terrorist attack to his administration's dreams of changing the Middle East to its vision how those states should be governed.   And he will execute that vision by force and power.

And the apple trees began to show the tips of leaves today, heralding the coming of its blossoms.  Sanford and I sat in the gazebo for our first time this year listening to music and taking in all the fresh beauty around us.  The rosa Banksiae fully covers two of our bedroom's tall windows and it is starting to show its light yellow blossoms near the roof.

March 12 today, was foggy this morning and then turned into a very clear, warm day before noon.  I went down into the deer proof garden to finish some weeding and planting I had begun yesterday.  The Wallflowers had a sweeet odor today as the sun shone directly on all the blooms.  Even the Sweet Pea plants had grown overnight showing some mature leaves and tendrils.  Columbine, grown from seed Ulla brought back from Sweden, are robust and some are showing the stems which will become those delicate flowers.  The Chrysanthemums clumps which were left after being cut back are growing good, healthy leaves.  I reminded myself to take some cuttings in the beginning of May.  All the grandchildren gave me a yellow Rosebush almost three years ago; it looks strong and healthy in its corner by the entrance.  Some Pincushions are already blooming a little.  I planted Bachelor Button, Coreopsis and Variegated Lupin.  Along the path, it is exciting to see once again how the Fern develop new fronds surprisingly quickly by uncurling from tight, snail like beginnings.  So I report from my garden safe from the grazing deer all around it.  However, we hadn't counted on the gophers which like the good, loose soil, to pull in plants of several varieties to their underground dining table!

I realized today what i personally miss in the present administration of my government.  Its rhetoric and actions never reinforce my beliefs, my way of dealing with life.  I find no echo of myself there.

We are expecting rain.  Strong winds have almost totally cleared the Plum trees of their blossom.  Many a year when the rains come again at that stage of the trees' development, we get very few plums.  As these blossoms disappear, I tend to feel that nature is settling in for months of growth and fruit and seed.  Fewer surprises now every day.  However, I discovered many purple Wisteria vines around town this morning.  And the Camellias are quickly dropping their flowers by the hundreds, or so it seems.  And the Star Magnolia is all in leaves now only showing a very few blossoms; come to think of it, it has been blooming for over two months right there across the pool where I can watch it from the window over my desk.  

This afternoon, March 19, I took some new Larkspur and Marigold plants down to the garden to dig into the soil before the expected rain and discovered the Bing Cherry trees in bloom just beyond the lower fence.  Daisies were to be spotted in patches on our lawn.  It was a chilly afternoon.

Later on that evening, President Bush announced he had given the order to begin the ware against Iraq.

At home on this first calendar-official day of spring, there was a blossom on the Japanese Cherry tree and another on one of the Apple trees.  The Pear tree, the Rhododendrons and the very late Redbud show their buds of more blooming to come.  Driving down Marin Avenue the thousand feet to the Fountain at the Circle, thee trees were getting very green until the sky overhead was no longer apparent when I reached the Fountain.

And with anticipation of more beauty to be revealed, I close having described the lif of our Berkeley spring as I was privileged to be part of its steadfast promise - once again.

From Ruth Plainfield, with love.

Photos of young Ruth with her family

(Click the image to enlarge.)

Ruth, 4 months old in the courtyard in Gau Bickelheim

Always loved this photo

I believe this was in Santa Rosa and Ruth is not in the picture - but it gives me a glimpse of a good time when Ruth was a teenager.  

From Dieter

Dear Maureen,
thank you for a message I would have preferred not to read. At least she has her peace now and no pain anymore. My condolences to you all, in thoughts I am with you. At least I can say that I had the occasion to know a person like her, and the gift that I could call her my friend.  I have attached a text you may use in any way you like, as a whole or in parts. Or not at all - just do as you wish.  I have passed some lines to the local newspaper. They called me and said that they are going to print an obituary for Ruth.
I wish you strength,

Dieter

To know Ruth was to admire her love for the region where her roots were. And for its people, in spite of all what had happenend.The past was in her present, and she fought for years to make sure that her family would not be forgotten. Finally she achieved what she had wanted. Everybody who saw Ruth in her beloved Gau-Bickelheim in 2007 could see how satisfied she was that – finally! – the names of her grandfather and her aunt had found a place in the pavement right in front of the house which once belonged to the family. Her grandfather and aunt were both deported and murdered in the camp Theresienstadt, a crime and a loss which had the greatest influence on Ruth’s thinking. She wanted her hometown to remember what had happened, and she had been asking for restlessly for something which seemed more than justified.

Ruth was born in the family’s house on “Der Römer” – “The Roman” in English, as her town’s marketplace is called. She had a lucky childhood, she felt as a part of the town and its population, just like her whole family did. Even half a century later, Ruth still had that strong remembrance of the cozy rural town and the happy days she had had there. She particularly admired her grandfather Isaak, a proud Jew and a German citizen who wrote in his prayer book the names of battles in which Ruth’s father Kurt had fought during World War I in France.

Ruth’s family remained part of the town even when the whole country had begun to follow a government led by extremists. The town’s catholic population held its faith above anything else, the new ideology included, and did not follow the regime’s condemnation of some citizens because they had another confession. Ruth sometimes told the story how she went up the Wiesberg (“meadow mountain”) right behind the town with her friend Katharina. The girls talked about the often repeated accusation that the Jews had murdered Jesus Christ. “How could I believe this”, Katharina said, “my Jesus was Jewish himself”.

Gau-Bickelheim gave protection in a sea of violence and racism, but young Ruth had to travel every day to the elementary school in Sprendlingen, the next town just some miles away. There she learned what it meant to be Jewish. She was isolated by inhuman teachers and fanatic students, and she had to accept that someone like her could not earn better grades than the worst “aryan” children. It is hard to imagine the humiliations under which the girl had to suffer, with sadistic teachers punishing her and making clear that she now belonged to an inferior kind of human beings.

The family could not stay in Gau-Bickelheim, where they still had little to fear. The regime destroyed the businesses of the Jews, watching the trade between farmers and Jewish traders, and using pressure against this kind of commercial relations. The family had to go to Mainz, where they started to prepare their emigration. A first attempt to go to South Africa failed. But then the family was able to leave the region they had loved and which expelled them. They went to the United States, where they had to make a difficult new start - Ruth’s father learned to earn the family’s living as a welder. Finally he found the possibility to work as a wine-grower in California, where Oppenheimers found a new home.

But her grandfather and her aunt had to stay in Germany. That they could not be saved and become victims of the nazi government’s extermination policy was like a wound in Ruth’s soul. For years and years she fought for their remembrance, against an indifference which kept hurting. When a table was placed at the wall of the townhall in 1990, right in face of the family’s house, a new deception followed: there were words about the victims of terror, but no names. It took nearly another twenty years before the town council decided to allow “Stolpersteine” (“stumble stones”) to be placed in the pavement, small brass plates with the names of her beloved ones. One for Isaak Oppenheimer, another one for Klara Lazarus. Now Ruth could be sure: they would not be forgotten in the town where they had lived.

Anybody who has known Ruth could only admire her utter love for the region of her origins, and her awareness of any injustice. She brought both to California and kept it during her life with Sanford, her loved and amiable husband. Our life has become poorer without her.

From Elke Fischer

Mir tut es unendlich leid, daß so ein besonderer Mensch wie Ruth war, uns verlassen mußte. Ich war mit Ruth
nur wenige Male zusammen, aber diese Zeit hat gereicht, sie gern zu haben und sich an ihrem herrlichen Humor
zu erfreuen. Es war wunderbar, wie toll sie deutsch und besonders den rheinhessischen Dialekt sprach.
Katharina hat mich heute am Abend noch angerufen, weil sie es immer noch nicht realisiert hat. Sie wird Ruth
sehr vermissen, denn die beiden haben sehr viel zusammen telefoniert.

Nun hoffe ich, daß Sie meine Mail noch erreicht.

Ich wünsche Ihnen, allen Trauernden, die sie gern hatten, und besonders ihrem lieben Mann Sanford alles
erdenklich Gute.

Mit stillem Gruß

Elke Fischer

From Betsy

I wanted to send my condolences and let you know that my heart and my thoughts are with your family right now.  Ruth was a very, very special person to me and to all who knew her.  I will feel her friendship like a benediction for the rest of my life. 

Betsy F.

From Ruth's dear friend Dieter in Mainz, Germany

Dear Ruth,
the local newspaper has published an article about your family in Gau-Bickelheim:

http://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de/region/serie/juedischesalzey/objekt.php3?artikel_id=3584434

I hope you feel better than you did last week. We still have the "Russian" cold here. Incredible.
The best wishes from Galina,
your friend in Mainz
Dieter

Die Serie ist auch im Internet zu finden unter: http://www.az-alzey.de/region/serie/juedischesalzey

Eulogy

Ruth Paula Opper Plainfield Eulogy

Rabbi Dean Kertesz 

Sunset Cemetery, El Cerrito, Ca

Ruth Plainfield wrote, “I am in a constant state of remembering the past and only addressing what is said at the moment. I am burning with the abrupt, devastating losses of the past and lightheartedly participating in present, everyday conversations. And I choose not to talk about what is gong on inside me. I choose it because there is no point. Talking about it gives no newer truth, no relief.” Ruth Plainfield lived a life that exposed her to the worst cruelties a human being can experience and out of that experience she chose to build a life dedicated to love, friendship, commitment, and justice. She felt an urgency to speak the truth, often felt her words were inadequate, and had to act to make the world a better place.

She was born in her family’s home in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, on January 27, 1925, the only child of Kurt Opper and Gerda Oppenheimer. Gau Bickelheim was a small village surrounded by vineyards, about 40 minutes southwest of Mainz. It was and still is wine country.

She came from a family of wine makers, lawyers, and art dealers. Her family was part of the German-Jewish gentry. They had a good life, but money wasn’t the critical value. Being honorable and having a good name were what mattered. A life well lived meant focusing on people, on friends and family, on entertaining guests. All the women in her family were excellent cooks. Her father made wine and wine was a part of life. Like most German Jews of that time her parents were proudly Jewish – religious practice and respect for the tradition was very important to her father Kurt. But they were also proudly German. Kurt served in the First World War and was seriously wounded, more than once. He had the scars to prove it. His father, Ruth’s grandfather Isaac, recorded the names of the battles in which Kurt had been wounded in the family bible. When signs first went up in the 1930’s saying, “Jews Get Out,” Kurt would go out with a hammer every night and take them down.

At that time the family lived in the city of Mainz, but they moved back to Gau Bickelheim because they thought the anti-Semitism, that had become official government policy, would be less virulent there. The strong Catholic faith of many of the villagers kept them from obeying the racial laws of the Reich. But the impact of the official anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime was unavoidable. Ruth had to attend the regional school Sprendlingen, a nearby town, which was run by the Nazis. For four years, she was the only Jewish girl in the school and she really suffered there. Just one example: Every morning she was made to stand in the classroom while the other students sang anti-Semitic songs. She, like all Jewish children, was not allowed to associate with non-Jews. As she put it, “The overwhelming changes that came into my life in Germany transformed me from a child delighted with living to one who doubted her right to exist.” But, in the midst of that orchestrated darkness, there was a light of human compassion. She had one friend, Katrina a devout Catholic, who snuck out every night to play with Ruth. Ruth asked her, “How can you still be a friend to me?” Katrina responded, “How can I love my Jesus and not love you?”

In December 1937 her father was shown a Nazi newspaper and said it reminded him of the funny pages. He was arrested the next day and imprisoned. Upon his release the family was told that should he ever show any resistance or disobedience against the Nazi regime again he and all his family would be imprisoned for life. A month later, January 1938, the family left Germany. Leave taking was heart wrenching, because they knew they would not see many of their relatives again.

This is some of what we know about what happened to members of Ruth’s family who stayed behind. Caroline Metzger, a survivor of Theresienstadt, told them later about Ruth’s grandfather Isaac’s death in Theresienstadt in February 1943, “In the first few weeks he portrayed great courage. He looked like a ship’s captain in his dark blue suit and captain’s cap. He was admired for his tidy appearance, especially since most men of advanced age no longer cared for their appearance. He always cared for himself. Only sometimes he complained of the small ration of daily bread. I am sorry that I can’t tell you that it was January or February 1943… Mr. Oppenheimer is reported to have died quietly in his sleep without pain or suffering. Generally, it was fortunate among all that tragedy that death came softly without people’s consciousness of the approaching end. Aunt Klara and Aunt Berta also died in the same way in 1942.”

They left Germany in 1938 on the SS Manhattan of the U.S. Line. A cousin in New York, Ilse Herz, sponsored them and brought the three of them to New York. They stayed there for a few days and went to Chicago to visit a cousin before heading to San Francisco. Her uncle, her mother’s brother, Max Jonas was already there and he sponsored them. Ruth’s maternal grandmother was able to get out of Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938 and joined them in San Francisco.

Life was not easy for them here, as new immigrants. Her father was 46 years old. Before emigrating he had studied to be a mechanic and welder because he thought he might never work as a wine maker again. He worked at those trades in San Francisco, but didn’t like the climate. He took a job recapping tires to move to San Jose for better weather and started looking for work as a vintner. He got a job offer from Fountaingrove Vineyards near Santa Rosa in 1941. So the family moved to Sonoma County and lived in one of two houses on the property, surrounded by 400 acres of grapes. It was an eden-like setting and Kurt oversaw the entire wine making process from growing the grapes to bottling the wine. The house they lived in is now gone, but the winery still stands behind a chain link fence, surrounded by an industrial park. It was terribly important for Ruth to lose her German accent. Because of her experiences in Germany she was suspicious of assimilation but assimilated in her own way.

Ruth met her husband, Sanford, at Santa Rosa Community College in 1943. She was studying social work. He had enlisted in the Army and had scored so high in his aptitude test that the Army sent him to the college to continue his education. They first saw each other in the library. The next time he came looking for her he whistled “The Blue Danube” to get her attention. It worked. Their first date was a picnic with her family at Fountaingrove. Let’s just say that Ruth took one close look and knew that Sanford was the man with whom she wanted to make a family and a life. They were engaged and had three years of courtship, while Sanford was stationed at different Army posts around the country. They kept into touch by writing to one another daily. They were married at Fountaingrove in 1946 and first lived in Kansas while Sanford finished dental school. They returned to California in 1947 and settled in Santa Rosa. Ruth worked for Sonoma County Social Services. The family moved to Berkeley in the late ‘40’s and Ruth went to graduate school in psychiatric social work at Cal. Sanford established his dental practice in Alameda. Their first son Mark was born in Berkeley in 1951 and their second, Kim, in 1954. They moved to Montclaire and hated it. It was the McCarthy era. Montclaire had a right wing atmosphere. In 1960 they moved back to Berkeley to the house they had built at 800 Woodmont Ave.

Ruth worked as psychotherapist at UC Berkeley’s Cowell Hospital which became a national model for caring for college students. She said she liked her work because she loved helping people. Ruth and Sanford were actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. They were part of the effort to desegregate the Berkeley public schools in 1963, the first school district to integrate voluntarily. She started a program at Berkeley High, “Philosophy for Senior Girls” She was deeply involved in her son’s lives. She came to know many of her sons’ teachers.

In the early ‘70’s Ruth founded the first shelter for battered women in Berkeley at the YWCA. She worked with the Traveler’s Aid Society for the homeless and while serving on the United Way executive committee in the 1980’s she worked hard to have the national United Way draft a statement of purpose that it, “was committed to fighting racism by any means necessary.”

Kim remembers that Ruth and Sanford were highly sensitive to racism, oppression, or unfair treatment of any type. He speaks of their constant encouragement not only for himself, but for all who touched the family. He recalls the great efforts she made to become friends with his friends and to know the world in which he moved. She was deeply interested in whatever interested him and did all she could to help him grow in the path he chose for himself. He says that she was always his “greatest fan”

Mark recalls that Ruth intuitively identified with anyone who was oppressed and was quick to make her stand beside them. She was driven to help lift them up, to help them in whatever way she could to become more self reliant and speak with their own voice. She mourned when she saw ties broken and people left behind. He uses words like these to describe his mother: self reliance, justice, loyalty, fidelity, nurturing. He says that she infected him with her power of empathy; that she was incapable of condescension; that her concern and care for people was always a close and very personal thing. She took people to her heart.

Except for the period from 1938 – 1941 she lived well. She kept the family tradition alive of cooking, entertaining, and hosting friends and family. She loved people coming to the house, especially young children. The dining room table in her home in Berkeley was always beautifully set with a table cloth, place mats, cloth napkins, silver napkin rings, and candles. The Jewish ritual that meant the most to Ruth was the Passover Seder with its celebration of liberation and its focus on family and friends joining together in a meal.

Another important part of Ruth’s life was reclaiming her past and demanding recognition of the crimes that had been committed against her family and German Jews in general. Kim once asked her, “How many or our relatives died?” Ruth replied, “They didn’t die. They were murdered.” She returned to Germany for the first time in 1967. She wanted to see it. She wanted to know if anything was left of her childhood. She went for a week on her own while the family stayed in Paris. On the plane she was visited by her father, who died in 1965. She heard him say, “you’re finally going back home.” After she returned from that trip she had difficulty speaking English for a few days. It was a profound experience. Gau Berkelheim was still intact, much the same as it had been in the ‘30’s. And Ruth was reunited with her brave and loving friend Katrina. From that point on her determination to connect with her past, honor her family’s memory and ensuring German accountability drove her.

In 1999 she was interviewed as part of the San Francisco Holocaust Oral Project. Her interview was sent to Germany. A group of 11th Grade students at her former school in Sprendlingen, where she had been tormented 35 years earlier, saw it and invited her to come and talk about her experiences. She accepted the invitation. That meeting was taped and broadcast on German television, closing the circle that had been opened so many years before.

Ruth worked to establish a memorial to the Jews of Gau Berkelheim. Due to her effort the town put up a memorial plaque on the main square, opposite her family home. But the plaque had no names on it; just a general mention of the victims. That wasn’t good enough for Ruth. She kept pushing for complete recognition and true memorial. In 2007 she went back to Germany with two of her grandsons, Samuel and Joel, to see memorial cobblestone markers bearing the names of her grandfather, Isaac Oppenheimer, and her aunt Klara Lazarus placed on the walk in front of the family home she was forced to leave 69 years earlier.

Ruth lived a long life. She experienced the worst humanity has to offer but chose to seek the best in people. She built a beautiful life and made a difference in the world and in the lives of all the people she touched. Ruth leaves behind her husband Sanford, her two sons, Mark and Kim, her daughters-in-law, Vicky and Maureen and her grandchildren: Fernando, Samuel, Joel, Julian and Sebastian. They share her hatred of oppression, her commitment to social justice, to helping others and her love of adventure, philosophy, culture and art of all kinds. They carry on her life. May her memory be an example and a blessing to us all.

Ruth's 80th Birthday Party Photos and her Thank You Poem

Click HERE to see Ruth's 80th Birthday Party photos at the Plaza Hotel in San Francisco in 2005.

This is a poem that Ruth wrote to thank all at her 80th Birthday party:

When her mother passed away, our darling Berta said,

Some of us are alive and some of us are dead

So, I come to celebrate my 80th birthday with you, my "us"

Because us" is where it's at!

"Deep roots and far reach" from Esther Maccmenken

Ruth Hart's open hand and heart

Our children who entrusted me with their babyhood,

and theirs who give me continuous wonder:

Fernando, Samuel, Joel, Julian and Sebastian

My Oma whose absolute kindness and constant blessing

last my whole life and beyond

My Opa murdered in ways not to fathom

Stands erect and proud and clear

Their children: my mother and father

Lived their lives without shirking, always sharing

My Onkel Franz and Tante Irma whose generous interest

Flowered my youth and young adult years

My cousin Bernie whom I followed like an adoring puppy

Kicked around by history in young years

Created with his Marianne a great family

The little brother Bob who became the brother I never had

And with Virginaia brough a new family into my life

rince, Princie, Gulliver, Rapearl, Pixie, Fred, Wesleigh and Columbus

and all the wild which grace our garden daily

Every tree, shrub and flower with Allison

Who, in my place, tends with care and delight

Margaret, my brilliant and funn friend forever

Emily alwas there with her young voice and clear head

And Gen, gone too, whose generous, bright spirit lives on

Hello, to Charles, our friend by way of young Mark and Kim

In 1945 I tutored Sanford's beloved young cousin Phyllis the math I loved and she hated

And now with her Hershey she can count all these wonderful grandchildren!

Our daughter-in-love as Sanford named her: Maureen

What fortune b way of Kim brought you into my life?

Beyond our surgeries, accidents and falls:

Peggy heals and teaches us gift wrapped in great politics for our joy

Their hose was there when we built ours: Beverly and Alan

And so we shared our lives for more than forty years

Becky, you came to work and help

When you broke a cup and your employers down in Mississippi did not pay,

Your mother "came and carried me home" - That is Freedom!

When she was six, she said "I need you"

So I became Roxie's godmother for good and forever

Toni fashioned beauty everywhere into my life

Ruth and Murray came West to join the Berkeley California styloe

and brought sense of family and the familiar to us

Ed and Claire and theirs with us for almost all our married life

All those beginnings and continuings experienced and enjoyed together

Scrubbing floors and now securing them against earthquakes

In five languages Wendy remains that wonderful total woman

Irma and I laughed through all that Cowell upheaval

and her long lingering sickness

Through social work and Jazz and watching tennis and poker in Glen Ellen

Sally's and my friendship grew until the last moment

mary and Bob, our dear friends

and their six children are the great Alameda remnant

Now in Durango with her new family, dear Betsy

traveled the world over in her mind and on her bike

Dr. Jeanette Payne, the woman with the wrong name

Held my hand as our children grew

Kathleen - such a good name to go with Stewart and Moore

So different, yet steadfast evermore

Grace White who graced my learning social work

by helping me form discipline for my sensitivity

as a continuation of his father Max, teenager Maxie came

And visited as a friend year after year and taught me the use of the computer

I dreamed with Bob every trip and adventure

He guided us in some of the best moments of our life.

Und meine libe Katharina: 

So weit und immer nah

Da vom Anfang und noch heute!

(and my dear Katharina: 

so far and always near

there from the beginning

and still today!)

Ulla, and now her Phil, so much fun

and talk and thought and being together

A truly noble young man, Scott, worked in the garden with me

until he went to DC, and Guatemala, Belize and Mexico

to prevent the spread of HIV

Dear Dieter, my young friend, sharing years

of letter writing across the Atlantic

about so much held in common

Norman and Lorna, with you we shared all our important beginnings

"He drew a circle that shut me out -

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that drew him in." (Edwin Markham 1915)

Sanford's 'little' cousin Joan and Laurence are supreme practitioners of the above!

Noel after years finally brought Mary to my dawn Gulliver walks

And she stayed delightfully in our hearts.

And so dearest Sanford, my life's sponsor,

Than you once again, for sponsoring yet another birthday party for me!

And to all of you:

thank you more than I can say

for being my "US" and for being here today!

Ruth

Dear Ruth - I miss you....

I miss you more than I could possibly say.  I am wearing your pink cardigan which I brought home from Berkeley.    I can see you wear it and remember how you would feel the softness of it with one hand while pondering a thought.....   Then often a "Well....." would follow and you would share your wisdom.   You shared more than your wisdom - you shared your everything.   Thank you Ruth for always having been there for me and for teaching me about love and life.  I wish I would have listened better, I wish i would have hugged you more, I wish that you are at peace right now.   

   

At night before you'd go to sleep

 you would make your rounds across the country

 to bless all of your family and wish these words on all of us:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee

May the Lord make his face shine upon thee

and be gracious unto thee

May the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee

and give thee peace.

Maureen