A mother of great inspiration

One of the most inspiring women in the world was born Ruchel Dwajra Zylska on April Fool's Day, 1921, in some insignificant village in Poland.
When she came to the U.S., she changed her name to Rachel Deborah Shilsky and later became Ruth McBride Jordan, the publicity-shy Jewish woman who was the subject of one of the 20th century's most poignant and life-changing classics, "The Color of Water -- A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother." It was written by one of her sons, James McBride, after a great deal of prodding.
As the sun beat down on the ol' homestead yesterday, I dusted off the 1996 book and began to absorb this moving and unforgettable memoir once again.
However, if it hadn't been for James McBride, we would have never known the tenacity and spirit of his eighty-something mother. Only her son, a former staff writer for the Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, the Boston Globe, People and the Washington Post style section, has been able to get some insights into her dramatic life.
When James asked his mother if he was black or white, she snapped: "You're a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody." And when he asked her what color God was, she quickly replied: "God is the color of water."
"In this compelling tribute to his white mother, James McBride, looks into the face of Ruthie McBride Jordan to uncover his own identity -- his humanity -- and finds that he is as much the grandchild of itinerant Jewish rabbi as the child of the all-black Red Hook Projects and that his mother had shared this truth with him decades earlier when she explained that God's spirit is the 'color of water,'" wrote former U.S. senator, Bill Bradley.
McBride, who once described himself as "a black man with a Jewish soul," besides being a writer, places composer and saxophonist high on his resume´. However, his mother's legacy of a dozen children and their achievements has to take top priority:
Andrew Dennis McBride, B.A., Lincoln University; M.D., University of Pennsylvania Medical School; M.A. , Public Health, Yale University; Director of Health Department, City of Stamford, Conn. ; Rosetta McBride, B.A., Howard University; M.S.W., Social Work, Hunter College; Staff Psychologist, New York Board of Education; William McBride, B.A., Lincoln University; M.D. , Yale University School of Medicine; M.B.A., Emory University School of Business; Medical Director Southeast Region, Medical and Scientific Affairs, Merck and Co., Inc.; David McBride, B.A., Denison University; M.A., History, Columbia University; PhD., History, Columbia University; Chairman of Afro-American History Department, Pennsylvania State University; Helen McBride-Richter, R.N., Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; G.O.N.P., Emory University School of Medicine, Graduate Student in Nurse Midwifery, Emory University School of Nursing; Richard McBride, U.S. Army veteran, B.A., Cheney University, Chemistry; M.S., Drexel University; Associate Professor of Chemistry, Cheney State; Chemistry Research Associate, AT&T; Dorothy McBride -Wesley, A.A., Pierce Junior College; B.A., LaSalle University; medical practice office manager, Atlanta, Georgia; James McBride, B.A., Oberlin College; M.S.J., Journalism, Columbia University; writer, composer, saxophonist; Kathy Jordan, B.A., Syracuse University; M.S., Education, Long Island University; special-education teacher, Ewing High School, Ewing, N.J.; Judy Jordan, B.A., Adelphi University; M.A. Columbia University Teachers College; teacher, JHS 168, Manhattan; Hunter Jordan, B.S., Computer Engineering, Syracuse University; computer consultant, U.S. Trust Corporation; Henry Jordan, junior at North Carolina A&T University; customer service and purchasing, Neal Manufacturing, Inc., Greensboro, N.C.
However, there's one name that I missed, and it's Ruth Jordan, B.A., Temple University, 1986. That's right, the once poor Polish immigrant received her B.A. in social work administration in 1986. She was 65.
Her father's name was Fishel Shilsky, a gruff, hard-rock Orthodox rabbi, who had escaped from the Russian army and crossed the Polish border and in an arranged marriage wed gentle and meek Hudis, who had been afflicted with polio.
Sponsored by her mother's oldest sister, Laurie, and her husband, Paul Shiffman, Ruthie came to the U.S. when she was only two and her oldest brother, Sam, was four.
When Ruthie got off the boat on August 23, 1923, "we lived with my grandparents Zaydeh and Bubeh on 115th and St. Nicholas in Manhattan." She loved her grandparents in their kosher household.
Ruthie considered her father a traveling preacher, except he was a rabbi.
"He wasn't any different from the rest of those scoundrels you see on TV today except he preached in synagogues and he wasn't so smooth-talkin'. ... Reading the Old Testament and hoping it brought you something to eat, that's what you did," Ruthie told her son, James.
When she was 8 or 9, the rabbi's family moved to Suffolk, Virginia, in 1929. "In school the kids called me 'Christ killer' and 'Jew baby.' That name stuck with me for a long time. You know it's so easy to hurt a child," the book revealed.
Then Rachel, who changed her name to Ruth, got pregnant by a black man and ran off to New York City and had an abortion, according to features writer, Ralph Cipriani.
Another black man, Andrew McBride, saved her from a life of prostitution, and married her. McBride became a Baptist minister and they founded a church in Brooklyn's Red Hook projects.
James McBride recalled that, "Mommy loved God. She went to church each and every Sunday, the only white person in sight, butchering the lovely hymns with a singing voice that sounded like a cross between a cold engine trying to crank on an October morning and a whining Maytag washer."
The author's real father, Andrew McBride died before he was born, and Hunter Jordan, Sr., "an elderly, slow-moving man in a brown hat, vest sweater, suspenders and wool pants seemed to float into my consciousness."
The tidy "Mr. Hunter" married Ruthie a few months after Andrew D. McBride died in 1957 and added another four children to make it an even dozen. When James was about six or seven, Mr. Hunter moved the family into a large, pink stucco four-bedroom house in St. Albans, Queens. In 1972, Mr. Hunter died.
"My mother raised us black because she knew that's how society would see us -- and judge us -- as black," McBride once told the Detroit News. McBride, a brilliant wordsmith, dedicated 'The Color of Water' book, "for my mother, and her mother, and mothers everywhere."

JUST ASKING: Alright, Mr. Mayor Harvey, here's a question for you. It seems rookie Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel has decided to pick Alice Major as the official Poet Laureate of the northern Alberta city, so why not have one for ever-expanding Vernon? It seems logical with our new cultural centre, on the site of the old Coldstream Hotel, in the offing ... Now, here's one I don't need an answer to: Will Vernon ever stoop as low as Prince George in getting hockey goons to go knuckle to knuckle? So that's the cultural event in northern B.C.!