Gail Rhonda Murray

Gail was born in the Bronx, NY, on January 15, 1949, the first child of Nathan Murray and Beatrice Ritkofsky Murray. Her only sibling, her sister, Sharon Lee Murray (now Rabinowitz) was born six years later, on March 13, 1955. Ironically, Gail passed away on her younger sister’s 69th birthday. Gail was very proud of being a “Bronx girl” and was educated from elementary school through college at Bronx institutions, including the Bronx High School of Science and New York University’s Uptown Campus (on full academic scholarship.) She was a brilliant student but also a gifted athlete. She was the only girl allowed to play in the boys’ stickball games on their block of Jesup Avenue, and she later competed in track, winning a few medals along the way. She finished her education at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she pursued a combined Masters and Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature. There too, she excelled and was anticipating a career in academia. She had completed all requirements for her Ph.D. except for her dissertation when her studies were derailed by the effects of what turned out to be a very large but benign brain tumor (meningioma) that required a lengthy recovery.

For a number of years, Gail had her own business in what was then called “desktop publishing,” well before the advent of personal computers. She specialized in designing and typesetting two seemingly disparate types of works: complex medical monographs and small. independent literary journals. Among other works, she prepared the first version of Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals for publication, as well as some of the earliest works in the field of “thanatology” that was then being popularized by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Eventually, however, Gail found her true calling in teaching English and other subjects in a variety of settings, including a private high school, the Parsons School of Design, where she created a special curriculum to familiarize foreign art students with a wide array of writings, from Shakespeare to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Had a Dream” speech, to give them a frame of reference in American culture. Her greatest joy and satisfaction came from her many years of teaching night school for hospital workers through the DC 37 Education Fund, helping adult students to prepare for the GED or to try college after many years of being out of school. She always said that those students, after working all day and taking care of families at home, were consistently the best prepared and most enthusiastic students it was ever her privilege to teach.

In early 1973, at the age of 24, Gail met Erica Bell, and the two quickly fell in love and formed a devoted partnership that lasted over 50 years. They were thrilled to be able to marry in 2011, but always said that they were simply inviting the State of New York to join them in their ongoing enterprise which had already been going strong for 38 years. They lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for all of those 50+ years, watching it slowly transform from a “marginal” area to one of the most desirable neighborhoods in all of New York.

Gail was one of those very rare people who had no artificial “persona”. She was always authentically herself and never said anything she did not genuinely mean. And that was the quality that so many people loved best about her, even if it wasn’t always convenient. Apart from her family, close friends, and her life partner, Erica, the two things that Gail loved most were cooking (at which she excelled) and visiting Italy, where she felt more at home than anywhere else on earth.

She is survived by her spouse, Erica Bell, her sister, Sharon Rabinowitz and Sharon’s husband, Howard Rabinowitz, her brother-in-law, Nick Fritsch and his wife, Lesley Doyel, her sister-in-law, Christina Fritsch and her husband, Kosta Demos, her nephew, Neil Rabinowitz , her nieces, Sara Rabinowitz, Nora Doyel Fritsch,, Callie Demos and Iolanthe Demos, and her oldest and dearest friend, Helene Chowes, as well as a host of others who loved and appreciated her and will miss her for the rest of their lives.

A private memorial is being held on Sunday, March 24, 2024, and her cremains will be laid to rest at Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, a beautiful place that she loved and visited often over the years .