07/17/2026
After Ossie Davis died in 2005, Ruby Dee kept his ashes upstairs in their New Rochelle home. He had made one final family plan before leaving her. The urn had to be large enough for Ruby to join him someday. After fifty-six years of marriage, even death was not supposed to separate them. Ruby later said the words chosen for their resting place came from Ossie himself. They were in this thing together.
Their life together had begun in 1946 during the Broadway play "Jeb." They married in 1948, then built something larger than a famous partnership. They became parents to Nora, Guy, and Hasna. Their home held scripts, rehearsals, political conversations, childhood chores, homework, discipline, laughter, and the ordinary exhaustion of raising three children while two demanding careers kept calling.
To the public, Ossie and Ruby looked almost royal. Their children remembered something warmer and more useful. Nora said, “I’ve always thought of being their children as ordinary and extraordinary. On Saturday, we did our chores, scrubbed the bathroom and we did our homework. They were serious about parenting, not unlike many homes. We had both parents and we went out to play.”
That was their family love story. Fame could enter the house, but it could not excuse anyone from cleaning the bathroom. Their children played with Sidney Poitier’s and Harry Belafonte’s children, so seeing a father on television did not make anyone special. What mattered was whether the homework was finished and whether the family remained grounded when the outside world started applauding.
The children even refused to watch some of Ossie’s performances if his character was going to die again. Behind that childhood complaint was a tender truth. They needed their father alive, familiar, and safely coming home.
Ossie and Ruby parented as a team, even when their styles were different. Guy remembered them with affection and humor. “They were like Joe Louis’ boxing gloves, the left and the right. One was the punisher and the other was the educator. They worked well together.” Their authority came from two people protecting the same home, not competing to control it.
Their children also saw how completely their parents supported each other’s gifts. Ruby remembered Ossie telling her, “I want you to be the best you were put here on this earth to be, even if it costs me. I love you means I want you to be the best you can be, whether it benefits me or not.” That kind of love gave Ruby room to become fully herself while still returning to the family they had created.
Ossie wrote "Purlie Victorious" (1961) and placed Ruby beside him in the original Broadway production. They later shared the screen in "Do the Right Thing" (1989), but their deepest collaboration happened away from audiences. Their children said they were raised with life lessons and with responsibility toward other people. Love in that house was not treated as a private treasure. It was something meant to shape the next generation.
As they grew older, romance became quieter. Ruby missed the mornings most after Ossie was gone. “He would get up early and read the papers and discuss it all with me over breakfast. At night he’d wait for me to come to bed. I’m so sorry I didn’t hurry up. We just loved being together.” When she was free, she visited his sets, and their hotel stays felt like small honeymoons.
Ruby died at home in 2014 with her children and grandchildren around her. The family that their marriage had built held her through the final goodbye. Her ashes were placed with Ossie’s, inside the shared urn he had imagined years earlier.
They raised a family, then left it carrying their love forward.
