Alice Kay Gross

ALICE KAY ROBINSON was born in Berkeley, CA on June 1, 1947 to Wilson Woodrow Robinson and Mildred Lee Maiden. After completing her elementary and secondary schooling, she graduated from California State University, Hayward in 1973 with a Bachelor’s degree in English and also in 1974 with a Bachelor’s degree in Black Studies. While at CSUH, she met an English major from Oakland named Gregory Alan Gross. Three years later, they were married on the front lawn of her grandparents’ Berkeley home in 1974. They began their life together in San Jose, CA, where Alice Kay began her teaching career at J.W. Fair Middle School. Four months later, a job transfer for her husband sent the couple to San Diego, CA, where they spent the next 41 years together. Alice Kay Gross joined the San Diego Unified School District, teaching a variety of subjects at several schools in the district, including Taft Junior High School and Hoover High School. During those early years in San Diego, she earned a Master’s degree in education from Azusa Pacific University. She would go on to teach drug education and sex education at secondary schools around the district. She spent the last decade of her career at Alba Community Day School in Park,

where she served as Dean of Students. Despite being responsible for disciplining students, her loving, caring attitude and gentle manner made her one of the most beloved staff members on campus by students, faculty and staff alike. As a high school student, she had lived for a time in Cuernavaca, Mexico to learn Spanish. Now as a teacher, she led junior high school students on Spanish language study trips and that took her across Mexico to cities like Guadalajara, Taxco, Leon and Mexico City, deepening her love for the country, its people and their culture. That experience also kindled a desire to see more of the world. She persuaded her husband to put off buying their first home for a year to take a ten-day summer trip across Asia. Over the next 41 years, they would set foot together on 21 countries and four of the world’s seven continents. Her three favorite cities were London, Venice and especially Paris. She also became an enthusiastic cruise traveler, taking more than a dozen cruises in the Eastern and Western Caribbean, the Pacific Northwest and the Mediterranean. With the help of physicians at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, notably Dr. Eugene Rumsey Jr., Alice Kay was a breast cancer survivor for 18 years. Although not having a regular church home, she was deeply religious, with an intense curiosity about the roots of Christianity. Her travels took her to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the mountain monastery of Montserrat in Spain, and

cathedrals in England, France and Germany. She also was an unabashed lover of all things having to do with Christmas, tracing the pagan origins of its holiday traditions to Christmas markets across Europe. In the last week of February, she went to Kaiser Foundation Hospital complaining of shortness of breath. She passed away there on the morning of February, 28, 2016. In addition to her husband, Alice Kay Gross is survived by sisters, Jerri Billie, Pam Griffin and her husband, Mack, of Oakland, CA; and Lisa Maiden Nixon, her husband Jeff and their sons, Amari and Reggie; niece, Sharday Nixon and her daughter, Layliah Franklin, of Fairfield, CA; as well as numerous cousins in Texas. She also is survived by brothers-in-law George A. Gross Jr., of Las Vegas, NV and Thaddeus Gross of San Antonio, TX. Her elder sister, Beverly Jean Robinson, preceded Alice Kay in death. Services were held Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at Memory Chapel of Anderson-Ragsdale Mortuary.