“We had a bit of a code. If the door between her laundry room and the house was open, I knew she wanted to chat.”

“She’s standing in the center of a cage in a circus ring, holding a chair in one hand and a whip in the other, surrounded by lions, all of whom are bowing to her, not so much in fear as out of respect.”

“Ruth always tried to give me an understanding of how far she had come, from an apartment in the Bronx all the way to a job and a house by the sea on the other side of the country.”

“Ruth gave no quarter and took no quarter in the 40 years we knew each other.”

“When I first met Ruth, she was obviously passionately interested in politics and culture – music, art, literature, film, theater – but she seemed relatively uninterested in design, perhaps because it was functional and mass-produced, not a fine art form. But then she redecorated the basement offices and suddenly became fixated on the furniture. She would call me into her office to pore over pamphlets of Eames chairs.”

“Ruth taught me the power of letting go.”

“She let people lead with their own strengths and gave them the freedom to do so.”

Ruth valued loyalty above everything else.

“Ruth Seymour was the smartest, most creative, most challenging and demanding person I ever worked with in almost 60 years of broadcasting.”

“From KPFK to KCRW, Ruth blazed a path that no one else could replicate and succeeded brilliantly doing it.”

“To distract me, she made up stories about the ‘Knot Family’ and their adventures which so enthralled me that I didn’t mind the pain.”

“My days working for Ruth were the best days of my life.”

“You had to be on your game in order to go deep with Ruth.”

“The front door opened, looking neither to the left or right, with a fixed determined look, fashionably dressed and carrying a briefcase, she swept though Master Control and disappeared into the office. "Who is that?", I asked. Someone replied: ‘That's Ruth Hirschman. She was with KPFK. Perhaps she's our new General Manager". So began the saga of the "Station that Ruth built’”.

“I am a different person from my time working with Ruth and forever grateful for that she included me in one of the greatest and most successful broadcast experiments ever.”

“When David and I took off to drive to San Francisco, she sprang out from the back door, looked at my 1968 VW convertible, and, worried about him, asked— ‘Can THAT car make it to San Francisco?’”

“I know the generosity of Ruth, a generosity of heart and spirit that the little girl from the Bronx kept all her life, and which for me is the deep part of my friend Ruth, American, the friend that I love and have loved without reserve. A worthy person.”

“We were two romantics dancing and laughing alone under the moonlight. Ruth’s childlike ability to feel wonder was contagious.”