Obituaries

Ruth Reinhardt Bloch was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend. She left this world on October 14, 2021, at age 85.
Ruth was born to Margaret McGinty and Joseph Reinhardt on November 23, 1935 in Long Beach, CA. At the tender age of six, Ruth was living in Pearl Harbor, HI, when it was attacked. She was then placed in a series of convent schools in Texas and California–several of which she was expelled from after audaciously challenging authority.
After graduating from high school, Ruth worked at Michelson Laboratory in China Lake, CA, where she met and married her first husband, Donald Stoehr. Together, they had four children: Dirk, Hans, Leif and Gretchen. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from UCLA, where she met her second husband and love of her life, Alfred Bloch, MD, PhD. They were married on April 12, 1975, at Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. The brood grew to include Alfred’s children: Jeffrey, Laura, and Lisa. She worked for years as a medical writer in orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and tissue transplantation at UCLA. Together with Alfred, she helped build The Bloch Medical Clinic, where she served as the head medical editor.
Ruth was a voracious reader, accumulating books?sometimes more than one copy of a single favorite? on art, architecture, science, astronomy, and poetry. She was intensely curious and would read (and re-read) issues of Smithsonian, Scientific American and JAMA, adding to her eclectic library. Ruth loved classical music and her garden full of roses. She and Alfred traveled extensively, visiting many European cities, including Venice – Ruth’s favorite. She was also a bit of a hippie, attending anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s and occasionally hugging trees, marveling at their beauty and vitality.
A memorial service was held at Hillside Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, please donate to breast cancer research at Cedars-Sinai through this link: https://giving.cedars-sinai.edu/RuthReinhardtBloch