Rosemary Rushka

89, San Mateo

After graduating high school in Wisconsin in 1948, Rosemary Hoell was expected to find work and get married without a college education because “her parents didn’t think the daughters needed to go to college,” according to her daughter Mary. Rushka fulfilled her parents’ wishes by finding a job in public health and marrying David Rushka.

“She was just a really pleasant, smart, loving woman,” Mary said. “She was always trying to please people, and she’s taken a lot of initiative in her life.”

The couple moved to San Francisco, and Rosemary Rushka decided to go to college at age 45, with her sons Joseph and John still at home, and Mary also off at college. At age 50, the Green Bay native graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University with a degree in health science. Immediately after, she found a job as a health information officer at the American Academy of Ophthalmology in San Francisco, which fit her perfectly as she loved to take on responsibility, travel and work in public health.

“She’d already done a great job at being a wife and a mother,” Mary said, “but she was able to pursue a lot of her goals.”

Rushka retired after 20 years at the academy, and spent her time traveling, volunteering with Bay Area health groups and spending time with her family. David, who worked in sales management, died in 2012, and Rushka eventually moved from their home in Daly City to Sterling Court, a senior living center in San Mateo. She contracted COVID-19 while living there, and was transported to Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center.

None of her family members were able to see her after calling the ambulance to pick her up from Sterling Court. Only one of her three children still lives in the Bay Area. Instead, they kept in contact through FaceTime.

She died on May 3 at the hospital, two weeks after contracting the coronavirus. She was 89. She is survived by her three children, nine grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.