Friends, family rememember Ron Singer

Ron Singer, a former Sonoma Valley High School drama instructor who brought a colorful life as a street performer and cohort of Wavy Gravy to his teaching style, passed away last month at his Napa home.

According to family members, his death was the result of an accidental fall in his home in late April. He was 69, a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday.

Born in Berkeley in 1945, Ronald Stanley Singer discovered his lifelong love of theater at Berkeley High School. After a diverse life in the counter-culture, he returned to education and drama in the late 1980s, and was a popular drama and English teacher at Sonoma Valley High School from 1990 until his retirement in 2006.

“Ron was amazing,” said his longtime co-worker David Donnelly, who teaches economics at Sonoma Valley High. “He put on theatrical productions that were one click away from professional.”

Singer met and married his wife, Tenney Singer, in 1972 at the Lama Foundation retreat center outside Taos, N.M. They later divorced after 34 years of marriage.

As a young married couple, the Singers settled in San Francisco in 1976, where Ron worked as a street entertainer, juggling and walking a slack rope.

In 1981, he met Wavy Gravy, the colorful entertainer and activist who now lives in Laytonville, Mendocino County, and still leads Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing arts camp.

The camp was co-founded by Gravy and Singer, said the former. “Him and me, we thought it up!” said Gravy of the camp’s colorful name. “I owe him a lot, and the camp owes a lot to his early inspiration. It was a joy and a wonder to work with him. We would create plays and we would travel from sea to shining sea. It was wonderful.”

Singer was a part of the Winnarainbow troupe for about five years, and left when he wanted to turn it into a Christian camp. Gravy said that was “not in our charter and it’s not anything I wanted to do, and we separated.”

Singer eventually resumed his formal education, getting his bachelor’s degree at Sonoma State University in 1986 and his teaching credential from Dominican College in 1987. After finishing his master’s degree in education at Dominican in 1990, he started teaching at Sonoma Valley High School that fall.

A few years later Singer called upon his old friend Wavy Gravy to help raise funds for a new stage curtain at the high school. “I was honored to do that,” said Gravy.

“He was a character – he really got the drama program back on track,” said Bob Kruljac, principal at SVHS from 1999-2003. “Programs like that develop and prosper based on the individual, and Ron did that.”

Kruljac remembered Singer as always dressing up “funky, funny, whatever you want to call it” on Dress Up Day.

“He really loved his drama,” said Kruljac. “And the kids loved him.”

His daughter Alison Singer Lasley lives in Sonoma with four children and her husband, Steve; she remembers fondly his staging of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Since her children were young at the time, they saw it four times.

“He was brilliant as a director,” she said. “I also appreciated the more serious plays, he was able to get so much out of his students.”

Singer also organized a Renaissance Faire at the school for several years, which ended when he retired in 2006.

In 2011 Singer moved into Rohlffs Manor Senior Apartments in Napa. He had a writing and drama group he met with on a regular basis and, according to his son, was enthusiastic about many of the people he met, and in generally good health.

“He was writing himself,” said Isaiah Singer, who lives in Brooklyn. “I had urged him to write an autobiography many times, and I hope he left some of that.”

A celebration of Ron Singer’s life is planned for 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 16, at the Sonoma Valley High School theater where he taught for many years.

The memorial service is open to the public, and there may be an after-party. “I”m trying to track down a slack rope walker, to represent,” said his son.