Ruby Lee Gooby

Ruby Lee Gooby, 97-year-old, Texas born resident of California since 1943, passed away on January 7, 2022, in Mountain View, California.

Ruby Lee, daughter of Archie Lee Odom and Burmah Robertson Odom, was the youngest of four children. She was born at home in Scurry County, which is just south of the Llano Estacado, high atop the caprock. It is an area some have described as “where you can see further and see less than anyplace in the world”. As a girl she picked cotton, swam in tanks (irrigation ponds, when they had water), and sometimes was allowed to ride her father’s old grey plow mare. Her first of a lifetime of pets was a little dog named Shorty.

Ruby Lee was the valedictorian of Fluvanna High School’s first graduating class. That same year, 1941, the Fluvanna railroad station closed, and major highways bypassed the area. The school has since been dismantled to repurpose the bricks.

In 1943 she moved to California and worked during WWII at the Alameda Naval Air Station in the technical identification division on the part interchangeability project.

In 1950, she married S.P. “Jay” Beal, Jr, and together they started Food Service Equipment Company, which they later incorporated. Ruby Lee was Vice President and Secretary of the firm in a time when women were not allowed to borrow money without a male co-signer. For a decade they lived in a flat above the store. In 1960 they moved the business to San Leandro, and bought their first home, in Oakland. The following spring, they welcomed a daughter. After Jay’s death in January of 1972, now a single parent, she ran the business on her own.

On her first and only blind date, Ruby Lee met Maynard Gooby. They married in the summer of 1973, and in 1975 they moved to Oakdale, California. In 1987, after a too-hot summer in Arizona, they moved to Escondido. Together they traveled extensively and were among the first US tour groups to visit China, ever a favorite trip. She continued to travel on her own after Maynard’s death in 1992, altogether visiting over one hundred countries. In addition to her travels, Ruby Lee studied Spanish and volunteered in the Heart-to-Heart program at the Palomar Medical Center. In 2000, she was recognized as Outstanding Volunteer of the Year.

We are forever grateful to the pulmonary team at Stanford University Hospital, especially to Drs. Glenn Rosen and Paul Mohabir, and to Drs. Mark Blumenkranz and Ted Leng of the Stanford Eye Institute, as well as to the staff at Villa Siena in Mountain View for their fine care and good cheer in recent years. In late December, Ruby Lee said, “I had a good life.”

Ruby Lee is survived by her daughter Lovinda Beal, son-in-law Jeff Blohm, grandson Jake, the children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren of Maynard Gooby, and many beloved nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends.

A gathering to celebrate the life of Ruby Beal / Ruby Lee Gooby will be held when health conditions allow. Please send inquiries and memories to rubyleeg@ gmail.com.