Teaching Legend Gilbert Named Parade Marshal

Weathered books with titles such as ‘Roots,’ ‘Les Miserables’ and the ‘Canterbury Tales’ line Rose Gilbert’s bookshelf in the family room of her Pacific Palisades home. The books attest to how Gilbert has spent her life ‘ sharing her love of literature with teenagers. Gilbert, nicknamed ‘Mama G,’ has taught English at Palisades Charter High School since the school opened in 1961. While most teachers retire at age 55, Gilbert ‘ who will turn 90 on August 2 ‘ continues to teach young people, whom she affectionately calls bubbeleh (a term of endearment in Yiddish). She is one of the oldest teachers in the city, state and nation. Twenty-two of her former students are now teachers, counselors or clerical staff at Palisades High, and she has taught many of her current students’ parents. When asked if she ever plans to retire, Gilbert responded ‘Never! They will have to drag me out feet first.’ For that commitment, she received the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Lifetime Teacher and Golden Apple Awards and was named Harvard University’s Impact Teacher of the Year. She also received local and national acclaim, appearing on CBS’s ’48 Hours’ and the ‘CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,’ as well as gracing the cover of Teacher Magazine. Gilbert, who inherited millions from her late husband Sam, also gives generously to PaliHi and UCLA, where she attended college. In recognition of her significant contributions to the community, the Palisades Americanism Parade Association (PAPA) has selected Gilbert as the parade marshal for this year’s Fourth of July parade. ‘We thought that Mrs. Gilbert was a perfect choice for this honor,’ said PAPA President Rob Weber. ‘We wanted to salute her decades of service as a teacher at Palisades High and her financial contributions to the school ‘ highlighted, of course, by her lead gift to the aquatic center.’ Gilbert has donated $1.1 million towards construction of the center, named after her late daughter Maggie. ‘Thousands of Palisadians have been inspired by her teaching over the years, including a number of parade committee members,’ Weber continued. ‘She is a fantastic role model for the community.’ Gilbert, who grew up in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, decided to pursue teaching because of her first-grade teacher at Malabar Street Elementary School. ‘She taught me to read,’ Gilbert said. ‘She was a marvelous teacher. I didn’t have all good teachers, but the good outweighed the bad.’ That ability to read exposed Gilbert to a world of literature, and she spent much of her younger years in the library. ‘I loved going to the main library [in downtown L.A.]. That library has a great reading room. I read all the plays that I couldn’t afford to go see. I read them and used my imagination. I still remember reading ‘Street Scene’ by Elmer Rice,’ she said, trailing off into a distant memory. ‘I could just imagine it.’ Her father, Abe Rubin, worked as a tailor at MGM Studios and made coats and dresses for actresses such as Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Eleanor Powell. Her mother, Ida, was a homemaker. She has one sibling, a twin sister Lily, who now lives in Culver City. Lily was also a teacher but left the profession early to stay home with her three children. Gilbert attended Belvedere Junior High and Roosevelt High School, where she met her first husband, Jimmy Corn. He died of an aneurysm when their daughter Maggie was two years old. When Gilbert attended UCLA in the late 1930s, the campus consisted of five buildings with a student population of 2,700. ‘Everyone knew everyone,’ she said. ‘I just loved it.’ She tutored the football team in penmanship for 20 cents per hour. ‘That was ridiculous,’ she said, laughing, adding that she still has the pay stubs. Gilbert graduated from UCLA in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a teaching credential. Since jobs were scarce, she went to work for MGM as a temp, performing odd jobs. She soon became a contract agent making $35 a week, which was good money at the time, Gilbert said. She recalls actress Ava Gardner coming into her office and plopping her feet on the desk. ‘I said to her, ‘Don’t you ever put your feet on my desk,” said Gilbert, who found Gardner’s actions disrespectful. She soon grew tired of Hollywood. ‘They expect the real world to be like a script ‘ la la land; but it’s not the real world.’ In 1950, she married Sam Gilbert, whom she met through his younger brother. Sam, who had also attended UCLA, was a widow with two sons, Michael and Robert. He was already a real estate developer, and he encouraged Gilbert to pursue her passion for teaching, so she took her first full-time job at University High School in 1956 and later transferred to PaliHi. ‘I hope to teach my students a love of literature, a love of poetry,’ Gilbert told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I hope to teach them the fact that they need to give of themselves to the world ‘ to make the world a better place for themselves and for their children.’ PaliHi Spanish teacher Ruth Mills was a junior in Gilbert’s class in 1969. ‘It was very tough but wonderful preparation for college,’ said Mills, who recalled that UCLA had a test that if high school students passed they could take college courses as a senior. ‘I passed that test, and I credit it to Mrs. Gilbert. Her teaching style was, and is, dynamic, confident and ‘My way or the highway.” Gilbert would assign Mills and her classmates 80 vocabulary words per week and what she called a ‘serious background book report.’ Students were required to read a large nonfiction book in less than a week and write a report about the book that included scholars’ opinions. ‘Her class was the first class in which I learned to pull all-nighters,’ Mills said. Many of Gilbert’s students have shown their appreciation for her. The class of 1964 kidnapped her at 6:30 a.m. to take her out for a pancake breakfast. ‘No one has kidnapped me since then,’ she said, chuckling. The class of 1974 bought her a cake with a go-go dancer figurine that said: ‘We love you Mama G.’ It was a thank you for writing them letters of recommendation to college. Gilbert’s students also stay in touch. Last week, former student Richard Greene, who graduated in 1962 and writes speeches for Barack Obama, spoke to her Advanced Placement English class. For 26 years, Gilbert coached the PaliHi Academic Decathlon team, leading them to city awards for five consecutive years. She believes it’s important for her students not only to study, but also to participate in extracurricular activities, whether sports, leadership or community service. ‘We don’t live in an eggshell; we don’t live in a cave,’ she said. Gilbert spent her adult life following this philosophy. Photo albums with titles such as ‘Poland 1976’ and ‘England 1984’ inked across the bindings are next to the literature books on her bookshelf. Gilbert, who spoke Spanish, and Sam, who spoke nine other languages, spent their free time seeing the world. They were married for 37 years before he died of cancer in 1987 at age 74. She also traveled with her daughter, Maggie, a UCLA graduate and trust lawyer. They went to New York every summer for the Tony Awards, and once saw 23 plays in three weeks while visiting London. ‘She was my companion,’ Gilbert said. Today, Gilbert’s philanthropy honors the memory of her daughter, who died of an embolism in 2004 at age 54. Gilbert pointed to a photo of her daughter wearing a swimming suit in the 1958 Junior Olympics, and Maggie’s gold medal hanging off the wooden frame. Her daughter’s love of swimming prompted her to donate money for the aquatic center at PaliHi. She has also donated to research into bipolar disorder at the Semel Institute in Maggie’s name. She gives numerous scholarships to students at PaliHi and UCLA, many in memory of her daughter. These days, Gilbert spends time with her nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. And of course, she is busy with school, teaching a full load. At the end of the interview, she took out a stack of her students’ writing assignments. ‘I enjoy grading papers,’ she said. ‘It relaxes me.’