ABOUT AMY WACHSPRESS & RON REED
 

 

 

Amy Wachspress has been reading stories out loud to children ever since she was a child herself. Raised in Schenectady, New York, she traveled in Europe, Canada, Israel, and the United States before falling in love with California in 1978. Her father, Dr. Eugene Wachspress, is a prominent mathematician, and her mother, Natalie Wachspress, worked as a social worker.  

Wachspress earned her bachelor’s degree in English and Drama from Syracuse University, her master’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and she completed her coursework for her Ph.D. in English at Washington University in St. Louis before she left academia. She also attended the Bread Loaf School of English through Middlebury College in Vermont for four summers.  

Wachspress worked for over a dozen years as a scenic carpenter, scenic artist, welder, stagehand, and theater technician in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was one of the first women hired to work as a scenic carpenter in the traditionally all male local union. She worked as a scenic artist and sculptor for the San Francisco Opera Association and the San Francisco Ballet for six seasons. She also worked in many non-union theater shops, such as the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Magic Theater. She also worked for the Denver Center Theater Company as a welder. After leaving the field of technical theater, she worked as a writer and editor, a children’s books salesperson, an administrative assistant for education and child protection organizations, and a Head Start administrator. She authored Cleopatra for the Quercus Publishing Company History Series in 1986. She makes a living writing federal grants for cities, counties, schools, museums, libraries, nonprofits, and faith-based organizations nationwide. She has raised over $50 million in grant funds for worthy causes. Her specialty is assisting with the design of and funding procurement for projects that benefit children and families, particularly those who are marginalized, discriminated against, and economically oppressed. 

In the early 1980s she worked as a peace and justice activist in Berkeley, California. She worked to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to improve the lives of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees who had experienced torture as a result of covert American actions in their countries, to provide food and shelter to the homeless, and to prevent the U.S. from waging war to protect its economic interests. She has been a Freedom Writer for Amnesty International for over twenty years. She was a founding member of Kehilla Community Synagogue, the first synagogue in the Jewish Renewal Movement to be formally incorporated. She worked as an editorial assistant from the inception of Tikkun Magazine, and later served as its managing editor. She developed a Passover Haggadah used for a series of seders held jointly by the progressive Jewish community and a prominent Oakland-based African-American church. After moving to Mendocino County, she served on the Board of Directors for Kol Ha’Emek Synagogue, the School Site Council for Hopland Elementary School, the School District Superintendent’s Advisory Council on Safe Communities, the Education Advisory Committee for Congressional Representative Dan Hamburg (Co-chair), the Child Abuse Prevention Council (Co-chair), the Policy Council for Children and Youth, and the Cultural Education Advisory Committee of Near and Arnold’s School for Performing Arts and Cultural Education. She is a member of Mensa. 

Even though she has a purple thumb, she attempts to grow a garden in the summer. She usually manages a variety of heirloom tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, pumpkins, and an assortment of squashes, herbs, and flowers. Her other interests include quilting, cooking and baking (her specialties are fruit pies and pesto), watching football (she is a die-hard Raiders fan, no matter how low they sink), and listening to her husband’s music radio shows. She has a habit of talking to her cats because she spends too much time at home alone. She frequently sidles up to small children and asks, “would you like me to read you a story?” 

She has been married for a very long time to Ron Reed, better known as DJ Reed (as in disc jockey). Her husband’s brain is wired with an internal hard drive containing volumes of information about R&B, Soul, Funk, Gospel, Blues, and Jazz. DJ Reed grew up on the Southside of Chicago. Because of the extraordinary efforts of his mother, Evelyn Reed, he escaped the Robert Taylor Projects with his life, traveled around the world with the navy, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in film. It is from her husband and his terrific family that Wachspress has learned most of what she knows about African American culture. She and her husband have three gifted beautiful multi-cultural children, Yael, Akili, and Sudi. She also had the opportunity to help raise her husband’s two delightful sons from a previous marriage, Mort and Brian. Amy Wachspress and Ron Reed live on a remote 40 acres of forest, accessible only by a dirt road that winds its way through acres of organic vineyards, behind the “Redwood Curtain,” in rural northern California. Ancient wise trees stand guard at their gate.

 

 

 

 

   

 

Ronald Reed was born in Chicago, Illinois to Joe Reed and Evelyn Grant Reed. His father worked as a meatpacker at the time of Ron’s birth. His mother worked as a mail carrier for the post office for many years and was a leader in community service and very committed to her church. Reed earned his bachelor’s degree in Film from San Francisco State University. He traveled extensively throughout the world before settling in California.

Reed comes from a large family and extended family, and was raised in the Pentecostal Church. His father left the family when Reed was quite young and his mother raised him and his three siblings on her own. Reed learned how to cook for the family during his adolescence and is an excellent cook to this day. The family moved into the notorious Robert Taylor Projects when they were brand new. Many of Reed’s contemporaries raised in Robert Taylor ended up in jail, dead, or addicted to drugs at a very young age. Because of the sheer determination of his mother, he survived this environment. To avoid the pressure to join the Blackstone Rangers Gang, he left high school in his senior year and joined the navy. He completed his GED while in the service. He traveled around the world on an aircraft carrier. Although his four-year stint in the military occurred during the Viet Nam War, he was not sent to Asia. He worked aboard ship as a machinist and as one of the ship’s disc jockeys.

Upon leaving the navy, Reed moved to St. Louis where he married and had two sons, Mort and Brian. He worked various jobs while studying Drama at Florissant Valley Community College. As he and his wife began to go their own ways and then separated, he spent more and more time acting in theater productions through the college and other community organizations. He met Wachspress in 1978 while acting in a community theater production of Brecht on Brecht at the Jewish Community Center in Crevecouer, Missouri. They relocated to California together in the summer of that year to work at the Solvang Theaterfest.

Reed worked for a dozen years as a theater technician in the San Francisco Bay Area. He worked as a scenic carpenter, scenic artist, stagehand, and theater technician for the San Francisco Opera Association and many non-union theaters and scenic shops in the area, including the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Magic Theater, Eureka Theater, and Bare Stage, Zellerbach Auditorium and the Greek Theatre. During that time he also acted in many fringe theater productions. To complete his degree in film, he made a film entitled Of a Kind. He has also worked as an artist, photographer, cameraman, film production assistant, and videographer. Following a serious back injury, he was forced to leave the field of technical theater and he worked for Whole Earth Access Tools.

After moving North, Reed worked as a photojournalist for many years for newspapers in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. He did a two-year stint as a computer technician for a computer software firm that catered to individuals with disabilities, particularly the blind. He troubleshooted computer problems for blind users by telephone. As a result, his resume claims that he has the patience of someone who has been stuck for many months inside a whale.

He worked as a physical education teacher and then as a computer lab teacher at the elementary school level. A self-taught computer geek, he has developed websites as a webmaster and currently works as the computer specialist for the local school district. He maintains computer operations at 15 locations and is every teacher’s best friend. He has a local reputation as an excellent actor for his performances in many community theater productions (both comedy and drama), including playing Walter Lee in A Raisin in the Sun. He is well-known as “DJ Reed,” a local radio personality. He DJs three shows at three radio stations on Saturdays; playing R&B, Soul, Gospel, Funk, Blues, Jazz, and whatever strikes his mood. To listen to two of his three shows (the third is not available on the web) via audiostream on your computer, follow these directions:
Saturday 4-6 PM PST go to www.kmecradio.org/stream.php
Alternate Saturdays 8-10 PM PST go to www.kzyx.org/pages/listen_now.html

It is from his wife and her family that Reed has learned most of what he knows about Jewish culture. He can eat gefilte fish with the best of them. He and his wife have three gifted beautiful multi-cultural children, Yael, Akili, and Sudi. Amy Wachspress and Ron Reed live on a remote 40 acres of forest, accessible only by a dirt road that winds its way through acres of organic vineyards, behind the “Redwood Curtain,” in rural northern California. Ancient wise trees stand guard at their gate.