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A remarkable cross section of Berkeley gathered beneath a gingko tree Saturday morning to mourn the death of Carla-Helen Toth and celebrate her remarkable life. 

She was, above all, an adventurer, said her friends, constantly breaking boundaries and capturing her experiences in poetry and prose. 

Toth, 42, a Berkeley native, was killed at 2:45 a.m. Feb. 1 by a freight train that struck her after she stopped her wheelchair on the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks on Bancroft Way. She had suffered from cerebral palsy throughout her life, the result of birth injuries. 

To the 80 or so friends who gathered beneath her favorite tree, a majestic gingko outside Giannini Hall, she had become both friend and exemplar, the embodiment of a fierce determination and joyous spirit that confronted and challenged all the obstacles that life threw at her. 

“It was eight months before she could sit up,” said her mother, Erika Toth. “She kept falling forward, and there was a constant wound under her chin because she couldn’t stop. She needed to try and succeed.” 

She was the first pupil with cerebral palsy mainstreamed into Richmond schools, and she graduated from Harry Ells High School to a standing ovation from her fellow students. “There was a huge celebration,” said her mother. “All the students honored her.” 

She left home at 18, the same age at which her parents had fled their native Hungary in the wake of the brutal Soviet suppression of the 1956 revolution. 

“It took her 15 years to finish her Bachelor of Science right here in Giannini Hall,” Toth said. “She met with indifference and later outright hostility, and many times she despaired. Her graduation theme was the gingko tree, and she spent many lovely moments in this spot, dedicated to writing about the environment and to life in all its forms.” 

Carla-Helen Toth wrote poetry, some of which was recited at the memorial, and served as both an editor and writer at Terrain Magazine, the publication of the Ecology Center. 

“I spent hundreds of hours with Carla,” said retired UC instructor Alan Miller. “In 1980 she came up to my office to talk about her major. ‘I hear you’re about trees and the environment,’ she said.” 

Miller retired in 1995, the same year Toth graduated. 

“We set the world’s record for an advisor/advisee relationship,” he quipped. 

One of Miller’s fondest memories was of his first field trip with his new student. “You haven’t seen anything if you haven’t seen Carla dancing with her walker, especially after she’s had a couple of beers or glasses of wine.” 

Whenever Miller showed up after retirement as a guest lecturer, Carla was always there. “I learned much more from her about taking advantage of the moments life gives you than she ever learned from me,” he said. 

“I’ve worked with a lot of good writers,” said former Terrain editor Chris Clark. “But when I think about the years I put in with Terrain, the thing I’ve proudest of is that my last issue had this beautiful article by Carla.” 

Toth’s articles for the publication often focused on her own adventures. Her last offering under Clark’s tenure was a 12-page account of her whitewater rafting trips down the Yampa and Green rivers. 

“She was braver than me,” Clark said. “Sometimes we get to an obstacle that’s too great for us, but I know that at the end, Carla was sitting in the bow, looking straight ahead.” 

Toth was one of the first disabled people to take up skiing, which she began 25 years ago by bolting skis to the feet of her walker, and was on the first trip down the Colorado River after the National Park Service began allowing the disabled to make the arduous journey, family and friends recalled. 

“She was a wildly enthusiastic person, an idealistic person,” said Jory Gessow, an attendant on her river runs. Toth was a regular Friday evening dinner guest at Gessow’s house. 

“She was proud of being a river rat,” said Gessow, raising a flask and drank a toast in her honor. 

“She was the strongest person I’ve ever known,” said Patrick, a friend from her days at the college, “She could see all the injustices of the world, yet she could always see the beauty. It was so beautiful watching her ski. 

“We lost her too soon. I think she just got so depressed that she forgot herself.” 

Then he smiled. “She was such a bad ass,” he chuckled. 

His fellow mourners laughed. 

Toth wasn’t a student of Professor Claudia Carr, but she wandered into her classroom once when she was presenting a slide show, accompanied by recorded tribal music, of hunger-stricken African tribespeople who nonetheless danced. 

She was struck by one of Carr’s photos and asked Carr to bring it and the music out to her gingko tree. They sat quietly, as Toth delighted in the music and the tribe’s ability to celebrate even in adversity. 

After the memorial had ended, Erika Toth talked to a reporter about her daughter. 

Life after graduation had brought its share of disillusion, when prospective employers refused to hire a woman whose speech came slowly and whose body would go into unpredictable spasms. 

“She was trying to find work dealing with environmental issues or doing research for an environmental law firm,” her mother said.  

Then, a few weeks ago, she fell asleep on her couch, stumbled getting up and broke her ankle. After recuperating at her mother’s home in South Lake Tahoe, she returned to Berkeley. 

“She’d had the best time of her life up there, but the Vicodin dragged her down,” her mother said. “And once the depression took hold, no one could reach her.” 

Erika Toth’s own experiences with her daughter and “a wonderful public health nurse” who had cared for Carla inspired her to become a medical social worker, work she plans to continue. 

“I just feel blessed that God gave me her wonderful spirit for the time we had,” she said.›