Addressing 150 mourners yesterday at his wife’s funeral at Hillside Memorial Park, Neil Rubenstein said friends of the politically active couple knew they never made unilateral determinations.
One of the pivotal decisions in their 33-year marriage followed a landmark 117-day labor strike during his long career in the aerospace industry.
Mr. Rubenstein was offered a management position, a huge change of professional lifestyle for him. He was immediately tempted. But he was unsure how his wife, Toby, would assess the opportunity.
“I waited for almost a week before I brought it up,” he said.
The Way It Was
During their family summit conference, Mr. Rubenstein related how shabbily workers had been treated by management over the years at the only company he ever worked for.
Mrs. Rubenstein had heard similar tales since they met and married in the summer of 1975.
“Tob thought it was a good idea for me to accept the position,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “She thought it would be beneficial to the workers to have someone who felt more benevolently toward them.”
Mrs. Rubenstein actually did more than merely assent to the job change.
“She told me how to handle certain situations,” said her husband.
Mr. Rubenstein soon concluded his spouse’s advice was sound because his promotion did bring change in the labor environment. “Used to be that workers would get fired,” he said. “Now, instead, they were getting second chances. One superintendent even said I was the most pro-union boss he ever had.”
Sign of Support
They were nothing if not loyal, inseparable partners, Mr. Rubenstein and others said.
During the four-month strike, he told mourners that his wife “attended every rally, every meeting, every march.”
In fact, on this sunny day of her funeral at the celebrated Jewish burial grounds, he said that all of these years later, he still had her picket sign, and he would display it later at the post-funeral reception at the home of Andy Alexander.
The Rubensteins — never one without the other —were hailed for helping form the impressively sturdy, authentic spine of this community.
Political Nutrition for Culver City
Former Mayor Ed Wolkowitz said he and his wife Marla met the Rubensteins in the early 1980s. The occasion was a now-forgotten City Council campaign.
“Toby asked me what I thought about ‘our candidate,’” Mr. Wolkowitz said. “I told her I didn’t have a clue. She proceeded to tell me all about the candidate and the community in general for the next half hour. During those 30 minutes, I learned more about our community than I had in the five years we had lived here.
“One thing Toby said that has struck with me to this day, that Culver City elections never are about politics and always are about community. Democrats or Republicans, it didn’t matter as long as the candidate we supported was a good person.
“When I think about it, it goes a long way toward explaining why a city overwhelmingly Democratic has produced so many Republican Council members.
“Toby must have concluded I was a good person because when I ran for the City Council in 1994 and 1998, Toby and Neil were staunch supporters. I don’t think they ever missed a campaign meeting.
“And I remember how different they were in their approach. Neil always was the impetuous one: Ready, fire, aim. Toby was much more cerebral. At the end of a discussion, you would react to her by asking yourself, ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’”
Paul Jacobs, also a former Mayor, said that “Joy and I knew Neil and Toby for more than 30 years. We probably met during one of Richard Alexander’s earlier campaigns. They were an inseparable pair.
“Yet while Neil was the more public figure in their partnership Toby certainly was his foundation.”
In closing, Mr. Jacobs said that “the strength of a community is not measured by its coastline or its size, but rather by men and women like Toby and Neil. They were the cement that binds a community.”
The End
Toby Rubenstein, ill for much of the final decade of her life, was 72 years old when she died last Monday following a series of strokes. Her husband marked his own birthday at her funeral.
