| No single label could encompass all the dramatic, kooky,
inspirational, colorful, funny strands in her crazy-quilt story. Ramos --
whose many achievements, setbacks and controversies are documented -- is a
bundle of surprises: a pacifist who lives in a Quonset hut that was once
on a military base; a revered but frenetic boss whose nickname is "St.
Maniac"; a lesbian who prefers "sacred companion" to "partner" and fancy
dresses over pants; a feminist who doesn't believe in abortion; and a
firebrand who can be fierce to bureaucrats, batterers and bullies, yet is
kind-hearted, witty, often charming.
"On a recent Saturday, , Ramos, a youthful-looking 65, chats at a fast
pace and in tangents, about her life and work -- including her latest
attention-getting demonstration: On Friday at the Bergen and Passaic
County courthouses, pickets will push empty baby carriages -- to protest
how battered women are losing their children.
"In the '90s, custody started going to batterers, and now it's more and
more and more," says Ramos, who will be handing out buttons that say,
"Children should be seen, heard, believed and protected."
Ramos' two-bedroom Quonset hut (relocated by a previous owner from Camp
Kilmer near New Brunswick) is painted shades of purple, her favorite
color, inside and out. Ramos almost always dresses in that color, and even
drives a 1986 fuchsia-colored Volvo.
| Highly spiritual, she believes in "the goddess, the power of
women's energy." On her outgoing phone message, in fact, Ramos calls
herself "handmaiden of the goddess" -- which initially really threw
filmmaker Jacquelyn Aluotto. But the Edgewater woman persisted, and,
for four years, has been filming Ramos' work for an upcoming
documentary, "Not in My Back Yard."
"No one works like she does for these kids and women," says
Aluotto. "She really is the real deal. She helps people 24 hours a
day seven days a week.."
As Sandra Blumberg, she originally aspired to be a flight
attendant. Or maybe a dietician.
Born in Brooklyn, the "always rebelling" only child of Jewish
parents, she moved with her family to New Milford. At 11 (but
looking far older, she says), she ran away from home.
"I took the money I had, I went to the Port Authority. I said,
'how far can this get me?' They said, 'Baltimore,' " recalls Ramos.
She and a friend got waitressing jobs and slept at a roach-infested
motel, oblivious to having generated a 23-state dragnet.
|
 | Runaway sent away
When the two returned to New York a couple of weeks later, Ramos was
sent to a farm-like "school for emotionally disturbed children with a
tendency toward delinquency" in Westchester. She was there almost four
years, graduating from nearby Pleasantville High School. (She has since
earned a master's degree in applied urban anthropology).
Ramos was 18, back living with her parents (in Demarest) and
waitressing at a Hackensack restaurant, when she met 34-year-old
Cuban-emigre Magin Ramos, who printed the daily menu. They were married 10
years and had three children. "It took a long time to decide to get
divorced, 'cause he was a very nice man. And he wasn't abusive," she says.
"I just didn't like being married."
After her divorce, she wanted to share her Hackensack home with other
single moms. "The ones that came to my house were all battered women,"
says Ramos, whose first arrival, a nurse, came in the middle of one night
in 1970.
Word got out, and other women came to Ramos' door. She always took them
in.
Frances Treanor -- then assistant manager for the Hackensack office of
the Social Security Administration -- was on the panel that decided to
fund an official Bergen County shelter. She distinctly remembers meeting
Ramos on Oct. 28, 1977.
"In comes Sandy with her long flowing hair and the colorful hippie
garb. I was in my little conservative Chanel suit," says Treanor, who was
nonetheless impressed with Ramos' compassionate approach and got the group
to go along with funding Ramos' Shelter Our Sisters. Treanor, who
continues to help Ramos, served as its founding chairwoman.
In 1986, the shelter board fired Ramos -- refusing to state their
grounds, though Ramos had repeatedly clashed with the board over her
sometimes unconventional techniques, her opposition to mandatory
counseling for battered women, and the screening out of women with alcohol
and drug problems. After losing a court appeal, Ramos, who'd been renting
a no-frills cabin at Ringwood's Weis Ecology Center every summer, wondered
"why am I living in Bergen County when I love it up here?"
She moved to Ringwood, intending to make a documentary and finally
start writing that book. And then ...
"People started calling me, and they said, you helped my cousin in
Bergen County, can you help my sister?' The next thing I knew, I was
besieged with calls from people," Ramos says. "And so, I started taking
people in my house here." "
Today, Ramos' non-profit Strengthen Our Sisters, incorporated in 1987,
operates multiple homes in Passaic County, as well as a day-care center,
computer-and work-training programs, and two thrift shops -- one in an
erstwhile West Milford church that, by coincidence, had a goddess statue
on its roof. Ramos calls her upstairs office (purple, of course) "Angels'
Attic."
'Everything I want'
Ramos, who teaches courses on domestic violence at Ramapo College and
William Paterson University, takes no salary for her work directing the
shelter. She lives simply. "You know what? I have everything I want," she
says.
She long ago came out as a lesbian, and for 30 years Ramos has been
with girlfriend Ann Benedetto, an interfaith minister at the Lakeland
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Wayne -- and coincidentally, the
niece of Tony Bennett.Now a grandmother of two, she is close to her
daughters Maria (a California attorney) and Sandy (a music therapist in
New York) and son Robert (an importer who lives in Fort Lee).
When her kids were small, she'd pay them a nickel for each pair of
freshly laundered socks they could match up. Hence, the first part of the
title "Clean Socks for the Revolution." It's a book Ramos definitely plans
to write. Someday.
E-mail: rohan@northjersey.com |
