A Place For Ruth
Ruth Kimmerer greeted late middle age by traveling the globe. Not satisfied with simply seeing the sites, the spirited woman would devise a mission to her travels. Once, she even smuggled birth control devices behind the Iron Curtain into Romania. “My mother-in-law loved to learn languages, so traveling offered a natural extension,” Judy Kimmerer remembers. “She spoke seven languages fluently at one point.” Described as “fiercely independent,” Ruth raised four children while working as an administrative assistant for the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Rochester (her husband died when her eldest child was 15). But as Ruth aged, it became clear to her children, who had all left Rochester for points west, that her living situation required change. Her doctor cited early onset Alzheimer’s as the reason Ruth should relocate closer to one of her children. Her son Rob (Judy’s husband) was the natural choice.
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