Esther Kart Russell

Esther K. Russell died on Saturday, July 9th 2016, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and dear friend Jean. She died at the age of 89 after a brief illness. Esther was born in 1927, a time when economic insecurity was always a constant; it became even more so after her father suffered a serious stroke at the depths of the Great Depression. He was never the same after that, and Esther’s mother Ella had to return to work as a seamstress to help support the family. Yet, as was the experience for so many other children of immigrants, public education became the avenue for Esther’s pursuit of the American Dream, a dream strongly encouraged and made possible by her working class parents. Honors grades in high school guaranteed Esther’s admission to one of the tuition-free colleges operated by the City of New York. Although she entered Brooklyn College in 1944 as a social science major, by her sophomore year she had decided that geology was her true passion, and it was on a fossil-collecting field trip that she met her future husband, Martin Russell. Romance blossomed despite their very different backgrounds: his family could trace its roots in America back to the Puritan migration to New England in the 1640s, while hers escaped the pogroms of Russia in 1905. The newly married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts so Martin could pursue a Masters degree in geology; as luck would have it, Esther landed a job handling invertebrate fossils at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. In early 1949, they relocated to Washington, D.C., where the U.S. Geological Survey had hired Martin. In April of that year their first child, Lanning, was born, and in May 1953 their daughter Amelie arrived. Nine months later, Esther and the children were on their way to Japan. Martin had been chosen for a team to map U.S.-held islands in the Western Pacific that would keep him based in Tokyo for at least two years, perhaps longer. The upside was that the family could come as well; the downside was that Martin would have to leave months before the others could follow. And while Martin had flown across the continent and the Pacific, Esther, Lanny, and Amelie would have to go by rail and troop ship. The journey was arduous, but as usual Esther made do. The five years spent in Japan were some of the most exciting of Esther’s life. After a year spent in rented Japanese housing, the family moved to the Army base where they all had the chance to make friends (some of them life-long), and Esther and Martin participated in theatricals. In January 1957 the family expanded with the birth of Jeffrey. It was 1958 when Esther, Martin and the children once again called Washington, D.C. home. Hoping to take advantage of her language skills and her scientific bent of mind, she took lessons in Russian with the plan to become a translator of technical articles for publication in English. Fortuitously, Martin’s new job at the American Geological Institute gave her an opening to apply her recently acquired talent on a part-time basis, which in turn led to full-time employment with a firm that handled such tasks for NASA. In the mid-1960s, Martin was offered a prestigious position with the Geological Society of America, based in New York City. They decided to go to New York, where after a fruitless search for an affordable apartment in Manhattan they bought a home in suburban Yonkers, whose most attractive feature were the backyard’s large outcrops of the metamorphic rock gneiss. How appropriate. Ironically, after working at the Geological Society for two years, Martin learned that it was transferring its offices to Colorado. Not prepared to uproot their family once again, Martin and Esther agreed that that it was best to remain where they were. It took some searching, but Martin found a job with the United Nations where his editing skills and scientific background made a perfect fit. In the meantime, Esther had also found a position with IBM that suited her editing skills and scientific background. For more than two decades she worked at the Advanced Systems Development Division, participating in the preparation of the documentation that enabled the company’s customers to apply their computers to specific fields, whether it be in banking, retailing, or medicine. Being a member of the IBM team in the heyday of its dominance of the computer industry in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, was the most rewarding professional experience of her life. But having been promoted to the ranks of middle management, she was caught in the crosscurrents of the mid-1980s when IBM, confronting challenges on a variety of fronts, began to downsize. It was with some regret and great relief that she retired in 1987. Their immediate family grew with their children’s marriages and the arrival of grandchildren, three sets of two. With each set they would establish a special relationship, although after Martin’s sudden death in 1994, it fell to Esther to carry on alone. With Amelie and her husband Mark’s two boys, Adam and Ethan, they had summer vacations together, including a month-long car trip to several national parks in Utah and Arizona. John and Samantha, Jeff and his wife Cindy’s children, lived closer to Yonkers, and so Esther and Martin were regular visitors and dependable babysitters. When Martin died, Esther moved even closer so that she could always be available when needed. Being nearby to Lanny and his wife Margaret’s even younger children, Meaghan and Kai, required Esther to resettle in Portland, Oregon, where she spent her final decade. The manner in which she staked out a place for herself in the Portland retirement community where she resided was characteristic of her entire life. She established friendships with people from different backgrounds, introduced the joys of Yiddish to those who had never experienced it, participated in a variety of activities, especially singing, and endeared herself to the staff with her generosity and kindness. Death came in the same way as her birth had—with considerable difficulty—but she had lived a life that made the circumstances of her entrance into this world as well as her exit irrelevant. She was a force of nature, as only a geologist would truly understand. A memorial luncheon honoring Esther will be held in September. Additional information will be sent to friends and family at a later date. As per her wishes, Esther was cremated and will be buried together with Martin's ashes near their grandson Adam in Brookline, Massachusetts. Burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations in Esther's memory may be made to the Adam Russell Gelfand Memorial Fellowship, c/o The Brookline Education Foundation, P.O. Box 470652, Brookline, MA 02447, or http://brooklinefoundation.org.