Ruthe Rose Lundy
1922-Jan. 20, 2007
Palo Alto, California
Ruthe Rose Lundy, 84, a longtime Palo Alto teacher, died Jan. 20 with her children by her side.
She was born in 1922. In 1946 she started teaching in San Jose, where she taught the children of migrant farm workers. She also volunteered as a teacher at the California Labor School in San Francisco.
When she first started teaching in Palo Alto in 1953, at the newly built Fairmeadow Elementary School, the roads weren't even built yet.
"The city had to lay planks down for the students and staff to walk over," she told the Weekly in a 1994 article celebrating the city's centennial. "The classes were huge then, but teachers managed somehow. No one had classes with fewer than 30 students. And it was usually more like 32 or 33 students. And these were the primary grades, which they tried to keep as small as possible."
She was such a popular teacher that a nearby street, Lundy Court, was named after her. In 1961 she was offered a position with Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) as the Curriculum and Instructional Coordinator and the Gifted Program Coordinator.
As a nationally recognized leader in education, she was a strong advocate for education that meets the unique needs of all children. In particular, she worked to meet the needs of gifted children by establishing the district-wide program for the gifted and talented in 1961. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) awarded her with its 1987 Distinguished Service Award for her "years of service, clear thinking, and high level of commitment to nurturing giftedness in children and youth around the world."
She served on the NAGC Board of Directors and as the President of the California Association for the Gifted. Her publications included a book entitled "Gifted Children: How to Identify and Teach Them," numerous articles and materials on curriculum development and instructional practices, and four children's books.
While she worked for PAUSD she received numerous other acknowledgments and awards. In 1974 she was honored as the Distinguished Woman of the Mid-Peninsula. This was also the year she was invited to be part of a delegation that went to the People's Republic of China (PRC) with the goal of helping normalize the relations between the PRC and the United States. At this time Chairman Mao was still alive and very few Americans were allowed to visit China. From 1981 to 1985, she was invited by the U.S. Office of Overseas Schools to work as an educational consultant.
She held assignments in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. In this capacity she traveled, by herself, to such destinations as Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Kuwait, Dubai, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines. She retired from PAUSD in 1983 and spent a great deal of her earlier retirement working with the Overseas Schools.
She was a "peddler of education opportunities" who, even when retired, did not stop pushing for a child's right to learn. She was involved with the City of Palo Alto's Neighbors Abroad program that built a school and library in a rural area of the Philippines in 1984.
As a representative of the Mid-Peninsula United Nations Association, she attended the conference "Making the World Safe for Children" in 1990. She worked on the conceptualizing of the issues and the discussion of the solutions at this conference. She followed up this work with many presentations on the subject around the country.
Even with her busy career and travels, her strong connections to Palo Alto kept her involved with a multitude of community leadership activities. She and both of her parents, Lamar and Isabel Rose, were very active in the leadership of the Palo Alto Consumers' Co-op. She was the Chair of the Friends of the Children's Theatre, on the board of Neighbors Abroad and a member of the Palo Alto Historical Society. As a longtime survivor of two separate cancers, she worked with both the Discovery Shops and the Reach for Recovery Program.This commitment to the Palo Alto community came from her long history with and love of the town.
She was born in Silver City, N.M. Both her parents were descendents of very early American settlers, including the second group of immigrants who settled Jamestown, Va., and a number of American Revolutionary War heroes. In the 1920s, Lamar and Isabel attended Stanford Graduate School during the summer and then, in 1932 the family moved to Palo Alto permanently. She attended Mayfield School and Palo Alto High School. She earned a bachelor's and master's degree in Education from Stanford University. She met her future husband, Jack, on the tennis courts in Palo Alto.
She loved to travel and play tennis with Jack. They were both well-known individually and as a mixed couple in the tennis world. They traveled to Europe several times for tennis and to visit friends.
She also loved visiting and traveling with her son, Tom Lundy, and his wife, Nola; her daughter, Jackelyn Lundy, Ph.D.; her five grandchildren and her many good friends.
Tags: teacher/educator
