[3] Benjamin Lehman, English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said she “had a real talent for gathering people around her, and that she "was so great a wit that we were all delighted periodically into really uncontrolled laughter.”[4] Well-known writers who were part of her circle include Stella Benson,[5] Witter Bynner, Oscar Lewis, Winfield Townley Scott, and Marie de Laveaga Welch.
[9] Discovery of Arthur Pope's affair with student Phyllis Ackerman (who later became his second wife) led to his resignation from the university and a divorce from Bertha around 1920.
[4][10] She sometimes had long-term guests and boarders, including Peter Case and Stella Benson, in that house, which she named "High Acres."
As she told it in her author biographies, "Bertha Damon has earned her living in various ways, the most interesting to her being the successful building and remodeling of houses, though she had no formal training as an architect."
In 1925 she had a Mediterranean-style house built on Eagle Hill in Kensington, California, which she sold to J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife in the summer of 1941, while he was working on the Manhattan Project.
After her book Grandma Called It Carnal became a best-seller, she was a popular guest lecturer to women's clubs and other groups.