Lifelong advocate for children, families, and education — preschool builder, Los Medanos College Child Development faculty for over two decades, and the voice in the Herstory genesis story who pronounced Sunne McPeak gloriously, indispensably "crazy."
Naomi Cogen Zipkin (September 25, 1926 – June 12, 2019) was born in New York City and moved to California to attend UC Berkeley, where she made the Bay Area her permanent home. She is recognized as a 1999 inductee of the Contra Costa Herstory Project, and is also one of the small group named in the Project's founding narrative as part of the original organizing meetings that, beginning in 2007, attempted the first formal re-launch of the Herstory effort.
Naomi's professional life was a sustained, decades-long act of building. She built thriving early-childhood education and parenting programs at Linda Beach Preschool in Piedmont, at Valley Parent Preschool in Danville, and ultimately at Los Medanos College — the Pittsburg community college whose Occupational Education Advisory Committee identifies her as Early Childhood Specialist and where, by her own description on the Tips on Tots author page, she "devoted more than thirty-five years to her career as a preschool director and Child Development instructor." Her published East Bay Times obituary records that she served on the Los Medanos College faculty "for over 20 years."
Her advocacy extended well beyond the classroom. She supported children's causes through the Bay Area Crisis Nursery, First Five Contra Costa, and the Concord Child Care Council; served for many years on Contra Costa County's Family and Children's Trust (FACT); and worked tirelessly to defend local funding for the Child Abuse Prevention Council, Crossroads High School, and Ujima Services, among others. The pattern is the NWPC pattern, applied to a single specialized field for half a century: identify the institutions doing the right work, get them funded, defend them when budgets are tight, and let no agency die for lack of an advocate at the table.
In the Herstory genesis narrative, Naomi is also the source of one of the Project's most beloved quotations. When the original 2007 effort to relaunch the Project went dormant and McPeak refused to give up — having the dormant treasury moved to a no-fee bank account she had opened in 1980 for the Peripheral Canal Referendum — Naomi pronounced the verdict that became Project lore: "This woman is crazy!" McPeak now quotes the line affectionately. The crazy persistence is precisely what made the Project, and Naomi was there from the first meeting to recognize it.
She remained, until the end, a two-time breast-cancer survivor who never missed an opportunity to vote, who loved music, travel, and discussing politics and philosophy — and who, in her own words to her grandchildren, hoped her legacy would be that "she made a difference." Without doubt, she did.
Naomi Cogen Zipkin is born September 25, 1926, in New York City. She later moves west to attend UC Berkeley and makes the Bay Area her permanent home.
Builds and directs early-childhood education and parenting programs at Linda Beach Preschool in Piedmont and Valley Parent Preschool in Danville — laying the groundwork for the model preschools that would shape Bay Area early childhood education.
Naomi is among the early leaders of the Contra Costa National Women's Political Caucus, founded in 1973 at Paula Schiff's Walnut Creek home with the explicit mission of increasing the number of women in appointed and elected office.
Serves on the faculty of Los Medanos College in Pittsburg as Early Childhood Specialist and Child Development instructor for more than two decades, training the next generation of early childhood educators across East and Central Contra Costa County.
Defends local funding for First Five Contra Costa, the Concord Child Care Council, the Bay Area Crisis Nursery, the Child Abuse Prevention Council, Crossroads High School, and Ujima Services — and serves for many years on Contra Costa County's Family and Children's Trust (FACT).
Attends the surprise gathering at Louise Aiello's Martinez home celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sunne McPeak's swearing-in as County Supervisor — the conversation that became the genesis of the Contra Costa Herstory Project.
Naomi is part of the small group at the original 2007 attempt to relaunch the Herstory Project. When McPeak refuses to give up on the project despite stalled momentum, Naomi pronounces the verdict that becomes Project lore: "This woman is crazy!" — affectionately, and exactly right.
Naomi dies peacefully at home in Walnut Creek on June 12, 2019, age 92. Her published obituary records a life lived as a "lifelong advocate for children, families, and education" who "never missed an opportunity to vote."