Ruth Schiffman, an author and retired teacher who for many years split her time between East Hampton and New York City, died in New York on June 9. She was 99 and had been in poor health for the past year and a half.
In the summer, Ms. Schiffman spent her mornings on Two Mile Hollow Beach in East Hampton, "working the New York Times crossword puzzle, and in the afternoons she swam laps in Gardiner's Bay off Little Albert's Landing Beach," her family recalled.
"Turning the Corner," her novel of a young woman coming of age during the Depression in Pennsylvania, where her father is a tailor and a committed socialist, was published in 1981 by the Dial Press. She also had short stories published in Hamptons Shorts, a literary review compiled and published in Bridgehampton in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Born on Feb. 16, 1925, in Bayonne, N.J., to Nathan Goodman and the former Pauline Jacks, she grew up in Maplewood, N.J., and went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in chemistry from Douglass College in New Jersey. She moved to Manhattan after college, living first in Greenwich Village and later in Chelsea.
She and Irving Schiffman were married on Nov. 4, 1954, and in 1959 they moved to Englewood, N.J., where they brought up their three daughters and Ms. Schiffman served as a Democratic district leader. She was an antiwar activist and member of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, or SANE.
The couple became part-time residents of East Hampton in the late 1960s. In 1978, they left Englewood and returned to Chelsea, where they lived on West 15th Street. Ms. Schiffman was "well-known and loved by friends, neighbors, and local merchants" there, her family wrote. She volunteered at the local homeless shelter.
The Schiffmans passed their love of the East End on to their children and six grandchildren, who visited every summer when they were young and continued to visit more recently, "even though they are scattered from California to Canada."
Her husband died in 2016. Ms. Schiffman is survived by her daughters, Amy Schiffman of Santa Monica, Calif., Susan Schiffman of Edmonton, Alberta, and Claire Schiffman of Pleasantville, N.Y., and by her grandchildren: Gabriel Pestre, Pauline Pestre, Sadie Schiffman Eller, Julia Butterfield, Paul Butterfield, and Eloise Schiffman Eller, and by her daughters' spouses, Andrew Butterfield, Christian Pestre, and Claudia Eller.
A funeral service took place in Manhattan at the Greenwich Village Funeral Home, with Cantor Ella Gladstone Martin officiating. Ms. Schiffman was buried at Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten Island.
Her family has suggested memorial contributions to Kamala Harris for President at kamalaharris.com, or a Democratic candidate of your choice.
