Beloved mother, advocate of kindness

Ruth Lubarsky (nee Singer), a steadfast member of the Jewish community of the Pomona Valley for nearly 5 decades, died at her home on August 20, 2013. She was 91.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1921 to immigrant parents and raised in New York City, Mrs. Lubarsky was the third of 7 children and the only one to venture west. She began high school at the age of 12 but, because college was out of the question in the middle of the Great Depression, she trained as a legal secretary, a skill that enabled her to help her husband pursue his education and send their 3 children to college.

She married Robert Lubarsky in 1946, joining the great post-war rush into family life. Grateful for the opportunities afforded by the GI Bill, they moved first to Stillwater, Oklahoma where Mr. Lubarsky completed undergraduate studies at Oklahoma A&M and then to Los Angeles where he completed his PhD in microbiology at UCLA, living in Veterans’ Villages on both campuses.

The Lubarskys joined a small group of transplanted New Yorkers in founding the Citrus Valley Jewish Community Center in West Covina. In 1964, they moved to Upland and became active members first of Temple Shalom of Ontario and then of Temple Beth Israel of Pomona. In 1970, Mrs. Lubarsky went to work as a clerk-typist at the California Institution for Women, working there until her retirement in 1987. Mr. Lubarsky taught for 17 years at Chaffey Community College, dying unexpectedly in 1974.   

From her own life experiences and her sustained reading of the literature of suffering, Mrs. Lubarsky’s guiding principle was that every person should do what they can to improve the world. She believed that people should have the chance to “make something of themselves,” with one caveat: If what you made of yourself was not an ethical person, “don’t bother.”   

Mrs. Lubarsky was preceded in death by her husband Robert and a son, Bruce. She is survived by her daughter, Marilyn Lubarsky of Claremont; by her daughter and son-in-law, Sandra Lubarsky and Marcus Ford of Boone, North Carolina; by her son and daughter-in-law, Rabbi Jonathan Singer and Rabbi Beth Singer of San Francisco; by her grandchildren, Aaron and Daniel Lubarsky-Ford and Rena, Jenny and Robert Singer; by 5 siblings; by 12 nieces and nephews, and by many dear friends.   

A memorial service and funeral were held at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. Contributions in Ruth Lubarsky’s memory may be made to the General Fund of Temple Beth Israel, Pomona or to the Robert Lubarsky Memorial Scholarship at Chaffey College.