Rose Gilbert, Longtime Fixture at Pali High, Dies

A teacher and longtime fixture in Pacific Palisades, Rose “Mama G” Gilbert died Monday at St. John’s Health Center, 10 months after retiring from Pacific Palisades Charter High School. She was 95.

At the time of her retirement, Gilbert was one of the oldest teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District as well as in the nation, according to the Huffington Post. She taught for 63 years and 52 of those were at Pali High — since the day the school open in 1961. Gilbert did not want to leave teaching but she told the Associated Press in February she decided to do so before she got too old.

She taught the great themes of literature to five generations of Pali High students, her “bubbies” as she called them. Her students learned extensive lists of vocabulary words, how to compare two or three great novels in one carefully constructed paper, how to discern valuable verbiage from "bunk" and how to build an effective college essay. They also learned to pull all-nighters, to drink coffee, to dodge the Cheerios she threw at them and to bring in cookies to get out of the dog house for being late.

“As you all know, her generosity and lasting impact on generations of students is truly legendary,” Pali High principal Pam Magee wrote in an email to faculty, according to the AP.

"(Palisades Charter High School) is fortunate to have been blessed with her dedication, passion, and tenacity for more than 50 years. Every day that I encountered Mama G, I was inspired to be a better educator and person, and I know that she had the same impact on many of you," Magee said in her email, the AP reports.

Through her six-plus decades of teaching, she’s touched and inspired many of her students, some of whom went on to writing careers, such as that of former Echo Park-Silver Lake Patch Editor Anthea Raymond.

Raymond grew up in Pacific Palisades and had Gilbert in class.

"She taught about the importance of writing as a way of communication and also documentation," she told Patch at the March farewell ceremony for Gilbert at Pali High. "She taught that literature can be fun. I ended up majoring in literature in college and I would not have done that without her."

Ben Hellwarth, the author of Sealab, a book about working on the ocean floor, told Patch at the same ceremony that he hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble with Gilbert for crossing over to nonfiction. Gilbert instilled a passion in her students for fiction; she got them "fired up," Hellwarth said.

Gilbert loved to teach. After her wealthy husband, Sam Gilbert, died in 1987 and left her millions, she continued teaching. She has donated millions to school where she spent much of teaching career. Gilbert gave $2 million to Pali High for the Maggie Gilbert Aquatic Center and another $1 million to renovate the school’s auditorium and drama classroom, which now bears her name.

After retiring from teaching, Gilbert continued to serve the public by volunteering at the Venice Family Clinic and A Window Between Worlds, a nonprofit dedicated to using art to help end domestic violence in Venice.

Gilbert is survived by two sons, Robert and Michael, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Pali High was planning a dedication ceremony Thursday of a remodeled gym that Gilbert helped made possible. That ceremony maybe rescheduled, Magee told the AP. The school is planning a memorial celebration of her life for after the winter break, according to the AP.