January 19, 2016

Marsha Ring

Marsha Ring was born in Dallas in 1945 and remembers a warm family life, made warmer when her grandmother came to live with the family when Marsha was three, following her grandfather's death. Her grandmother remained with them for the rest of her life, and Marsha often said she felt she had two mothers. Her father ran a service station and later added a building to sell auto parts, with her mother working alongside him. When her father developed colon cancer during Marsha's high school years, her mother took over the business and ran it daily. Her grandparents came from a part of Europe that changed hands often; her grandmother sometimes said Poland and sometimes Lithuania.

Marsha grew up loving to read, riding her bike to a bookmobile that visited near Preston and Royal. She attended Colonial school in South Dallas, where her father had also gone as a child, and later a school on Royal Lane. She studied biology at Newcomb College, part of Tulane University, and took pride that her class in 1963 saw the admission of the school's first African American student. She began graduate study in biology but did not finish, later reflecting on the discrimination women faced in advanced degree programs. Years later, when her children were half grown, she returned to school and earned a PhD in family therapy in 1998.

Marsha married at a Dallas synagogue and lived in several cities as her husband, an anesthesiologist, served in the military at the Presidio in San Francisco and completed his residency in El Paso. The couple adopted their first child in San Francisco and their second in El Paso, whose birth mother had specifically requested a Jewish family. Their third child was a surprise. Returning to Dallas in 1979, Marsha joined Temple Shalom and became active in ORT, becoming president within about six months and raising significant funds for vocational training. She and her husband have three children and a total of six grandchildren, and her advice to the next generation is simply to be patient.

Read Full Transcript