Ruth Sisk Caruso Hortman Carver

Ruth Sisk Carver died February 25, 2015 at her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following a long and active life. She was born July 13, 1927 in Texarkana, Texas, the fifth of fifteen children born to Charles W. and Lowral Sisk. Following high school she moved to New Orleans, receiving her R.N. degree from Touro Infirmary in 1948. She spent the early years of her nursing career balancing full-time hospital nursing duties and raising four small children until moving to Baton Rouge in 1957. She returned to nursing in 1965, practicing in both hospital, public health, and home-health settings, ending her career assisting terminally-ill patients and their families with end-of-life care. Following her retirement she met and married retired LSU engineering professor and poet, Dale Ringwald Carver. After surviving breast-cancer in 1989 she became more active than ever, drinking life deeply and zestfully. She devoted herself to her family and friends, and to gardening, camping and traveling widely with her beloved husband Dale, with whom she visited Kenya, France and Belgium as well as numerous national and state parks throughout the United States and Canada. In addition to gardening, camping and travel, she loved music, poetry, theater, her annual crawfish boils, and frequent trips to Pensacola Beach, collecting seashells and joyously watching for the porpoises. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge and the choir. She was preceded in death by husband Dale Carver; by brothers William, Jesse Morris, Charles, and Ed Sisk; and by sisters Lorene Conn, Nell Magoulas and Lois Caul. She is survived by two daughters, Paula (Rich) Bryars and Rebecca (Loren) Harrison of Baton Rouge; two sons, Tony Caruso of Denham Springs and Andy (Carol) Caruso of Schenectady, New York; by brothers Jack, Jim, Frank, David, Harvey, and Glenn Sisk, and by one sister, Alma Jo Kinsey; by five step-children: Barbara Craig (Doug), Susan Giglio (Steven), Carol Dougherty, Nancy Dougherty (Bobby), and David R. Carver, M.D. (Leslie); and by ten grand-children, twenty-one great-grandchildren, and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins, and step-grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was a loving wife, a loving mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to her numerous offspring, with a loving extended family of brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. Special thanks to Clyde and Van Wade Day, who brightened and enriched her life over decades as friends and neighbors; and to her special family of loving in-home caregivers who assisted and comforted her in the final years of her life. Visitation at Rabenhorst Funeral Home, 825 Government St., on Monday, March 2nd from 5-9 p.m., and on Tuesday March 3rd from 10 a.m. until services at 11 a.m., with burial to follow at Port Hudson National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made to the LSU School of Engineering.