Longtime teacher, champion of walking Jeff Tobes dies

Jeff Tobes was Sonoma County’s walking teacher, an endlessly curious and innovative educator who discovered myriad benefits from getting grade-schoolers out into the world and learning with their eyes, ears, noses, hands, imaginations - and feet.

Tobes also taught regional history to legions of adults while leading them on long walks of discovery throughout the county and across the city of San Francisco.

Recalls his wife, Linda, “Before we were married he had me go on a 25-mile walk. I should have gotten the hint.”

Jeff Tobes, who worked 30 years at Forestville School before moving to Santa Rosa schools, died Sunday, four months after an onset of abdominal pain led to a diagnosis of advanced stomach cancer. He was 68.

“He wanted his kids to walk in the footsteps of the people in history,” said Don Feige, who team-taught sixth-graders with Tobes for two years at Santa Rosa’s Helen Lehman School.

Lehman School is located on Santa Rosa’s Jennings Avenue, just north of West College Avenue. While introducing students to the late Edward Jennings, Tobes would take his them on a walk of the former boundaries of the Jennings Ranch, which involved obtaining permission to visit the Coddingtown Mall Macy’s, below which lay one of the northernmost points of the historic ranch.

Most mornings, Tobes would lead his students onto the play field for 30 minutes of walking and running. One reason was to build strength, stamina and enthusiasm for the anticipated, end-of-school walk of at least 15 miles.

And, said former colleague Feige, “His students returned to class settled, awake and ready to learn.”

Tobes also would take his students, many from families with no experience of college, on field trips to two of the Bay Area’s premier universities, Stanford and UC Berkeley. “He just wanted to plant the seed of possibility in their minds,” Feige said.

Linda Tobes said her husband savored the calls from former students announcing that they’d been accepted at Cal, Stanford or elsewhere and thanking him for the campus visit. “They told him that’s where they got the spark.”

History intrigued Jeff Tobes. He was one of the county’s staunchest advocates of History Day, which has students create and present elaborate history projects, some of which qualify for advancement to regional, state and national competitions.

Tobes’ love of history and of walking led to him become a leader of the Sonoma County Historical Society and to organize annual walks throughout the county and in San Francisco. He said earlier this year, “Taking walks in San Francisco was something I had done several times with my wonderful students from Forestville School. I’ll never forget finally finishing the full 25 miles at Ghirardelli Square, ordering chocolate sundaes and looking over only to see my fourth grade friend, Aaron, asleep. If grade school students could do this, certainly adults could.”

Tobes was born in Detroit in 1947. He was 6 weeks old when his family moved to Los Angeles. As a young man he trained at UCLA for a career in education.

“Jeffrey always wanted to be a teacher,” his wife said. “It was his calling.”

The walking thing went way back. Linda Tobes recalled that while her husband was student teaching at L.A.’s Crenshaw High he led a small group of students on a trek all the way to Simi Valley.

Jeff Tobes taught briefly at the private St. Francis Solano School in Sonoma before taking a classroom position at Forestville School. While there, he attempted to have the Russian River town’s name changed back to the original Forrestville, to honor one of its founders. His quest didn’t catch on.

He became the principal of Forestville School but in time found he wanted to be back in the classroom. After three decades in Forestville, he moved to Helen Lehman School. He retired from there in 2009 but quickly seized an opportunity to teach at the Wright Charter School, west of Santa Rosa.

He was planning to return to Wright this school for a long-term job as a substitute when he received the diagnosis of stage four cancer. His death came at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Santa Rosa.

Family and friends said that in addition to teaching, history and walking, Tobes was passionate about music. He played the trumpet the past 10 years in the Healdsburg Community Band.

Said friend and fellow teacher Don Feige, “One of the visions burned in my mind is of Jeff Tobes belting out Reveille on his trumpet at 7 a.m. and the outdoor-education sixth graders (camping at Westminster Woods, near Occidental) roll out of their cabins with smiles on their faces.”

In addition to his wife in Santa Rosa, Tobes is survived by daughter Katie Tobes of San Rafael, sons Gus Tobes of El Cerrito and Eddie Tobes of Seattle, sisters Honey Goldfarb of Monrovia and Dolly Brewster of Glendora, and brother Melvyn Tobes of San Mateo.

A memorial service is at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Friedman Event Center in Santa Rosa.

Tobes’ family suggests memorial contributions to the Sonoma County Historical Society, P.O. Box 1373, Santa Rosa 95402, or to the Healdsburg Community Band, P.O. Box 582, Healdsburg 95448.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.