Ada Stein; spent 25 years assisting hospital patients
To hear her family tell it, Ada Stein kept a big secret from her bosses and co-workers at school until she could hide it no longer. Although she had been married for a year, Mrs. Stein still taught in Cambridge under her maiden name, Ada Callum. It wasn’t until she was pregnant with her first son, Philip, that Mrs. Stein came clean and quit teaching in 1939.
“Her parents took her to New York to marry her husband in 1937 or 1938,’’ said Helene Solomon of Brookline, Mrs. Stein’s daughter-in-law. “I don’t know if it was illegal or if it was not done, but teachers wouldn’t or couldn’t be married’’ in Massachusetts, Solomon said.
Ada Stein died Saturday at her home in Belmont. She was 96.
Born in Cambridge, Mrs. Stein finished high school in Cambridge at the age of 16 and graduated from Salem State College in 1931 at 19. Mrs. Stein taught in the Cambridge public school system for eight years, even through her family-assisted elopement.
Many years later, Mrs. Stein served as a patient representative at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, visiting patients and keeping them company. A timeline in the hospital’s lobby prominently features her, Solomon said. Mrs. Stein, then a Belmont resident, worked at the hospital from the age of 60 until she was 85.
Solomon said that although Mrs. Stein spoke of volunteering with patients and bringing them newspapers, she never shared information about the patients to her family, keeping every confidence she’d been given.
“That was there and belonged there,’’ Solomon said. “She was really a caretaker; kind, not a bad bone in her.’’
Her kindness extended halfway across the world, through a Vietnamese family that moved to the United States in 1981.
Mary Chau was a 5-year-old refugee in Taiwan when Temple Beth El in Belmont sponsored her family’s relocation to the Boston area. Mrs. Stein, cochairwoman of the temple’s social action committee, was there to help them.
“She took us to get our immunizations, she took us to find a place to live. She would help my parents register my sister and me for school,’’ Chau said.
Even after the family was settled, Mrs. Stein stayed close. She attended the girls’ graduations and weddings, Chau said.
“She made us like family, made this country a home to us when it was a new place,’’ Chau said. “She’s the closest thing to a grandparent we have.’’
Mrs. Stein was predeceased by her husband, Samuel, and their son Philip. She leaves two other sons, Norman of Bedford and Bill of Brookline; four grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held today at noon in Temple Beth El in Belmont. Burial will follow in Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon.