Ruth Elizabeth (Brown) Beecher

Ruth Elizabeth Beecher passed away on August 18, 2020 at Trustbridge hospice in Pompano Beach Florida. Her daughter and son-in-law were by her side. After bravely winning her two-month battle with the COVID-19 virus, Ruth made an unexpected recovery, but developed health issues, including unresolvable congestive heart failure and end-stage lung disease. Her passing was peaceful and pain-free. Ruth was 93.

Born on December 2,1926 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Ruth spent her formative school years in Johnstown, Boston, and Lawnsdale, California where she attended her senior year of high school. Ruth had been a resident of the greater Fort Lauderdale area for more than three decades.

A lifelong nurse and health educator with a deep commitment to to her country, Ruth trained at the Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing in Manhattan, graduating in1951. Upon graduation, she joined the United States Navy Nurse Corps to support U.S. war efforts in Korea. After her naval indoctrination at St. Albans Naval Hospital and Medical Indoctrination Center on Long Island, she did not ship out like others, but as a credentialed Registered Nurse with sound nursing experience, the Navy retained her to train deploying care givers. As a trainer, Ruth stayed in New York where duties, included writing curriculum for neurosurgical nursing procedures, supervising and training corpsmen to care for the war wounded as part of the Fleet Marine Force operations. She met her New-York-born husband, Kenneth Beecher, at Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church. Following Ruth's naval service, she and Ken settled on Long Island, NY where Ruth continued her nursing career and became a mother of two.

In the early years of her career, Ruth held a wide range of positions at many New York-area hospitals across a broad spectrum of nursing specialties. She loved clinical nursing, but she also loved her family, including two school-age children. This prompted Ruth to pursue a more family-friendly nursing career. She earned Bachelors and graduate degrees in education in order to prepare for a brand new field of nursing in New York's 1960-era public schools, Ruth soon became one of New York’s first School Nurse Teachers (SNTs), a career more adaptable to school schedules. While she kept up her clinical skills through continued education and work in the field, Ruth oversaw her students' health in the office while developing and delivering heath education curriculum that she taught in the classroom. Now a single mom, she could also enjoy school holidays and summer vacations together with her own kids, traveling around the United States and later overseas. What began as a living historical historical counterpart to classroom learning, became a lifelong pastime and passion.

Ruth retired from public school life after twenty years, applied for a volunteer position with the Peace Corps, and moved to Monrovia, Liberia as the American counterpart to the Director of Nursing at the JFK Medical Center. Her assignment to Liberia followed a bloody coup and produced ensuing civil unrest that reverberated during her two-year Peace Corps tenure. Adopting the Peace Corps slogan, "the toughest job you'll ever love," Ruth talked about her work with fervor. She revamped and modernized the nursing curriculum, trained Liberian nursing students, cooked and entertained in her spare time. When it ended, she traveled for months all across Africa visiting as many countries as should could on this vast and rich continent, visiting friends, making new ones and seeing as much as she could see.

Ruth's life would be defined by service to her country, patriotism, nursing and family, but her leisure passion was travel well into her eighth decade of life. When she was not on the move, she was planning her next adventures. After Ruth moved to Margate, Florida to be near her sister Zelma, her globe trotting began in earnest. Near major international airports and cruise ports in both Fort Lauderdale and Miami, she executed a travel plan of action taking her to every corner of the globe. She traveled alone, with her sister, family, friends, acquaintances, collecting rich experiences and many lifetime friends along the way. She learned to sail and crewed her way through the Greek Islands for pay. After her adult children were in government service careers themselves, she visited them at home and abroad every chance she got.

An indefatigable traveler, this Navy nurse who loved the sea gradually came to favor the ease and pleasures of cruising. During her last decades she tallied more than seventy cruises, often presenting the colors in her ceremonial red, white and blue with the ship’s captain. Ruth was a patriot, a leader, a joiner and a purveyor of good clean fun. She organized events, alumni reunions, US Bicentennial parties in New York, and she remained, into her 80’s, an active volunteer or officer in many civic and charitable organizations. Ruth served as an officer of veterans associations and was a volunteer for military selective service. She supported more than thirty causes across a wide variety of charities, She cared deeply about humanity and paying it forward. She was a founding contributor to the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and a supporting member of the Navy Memorial in Washington DC where plans are underway to memorialize her with a permanent bronze plaque,

Ruth Beecher faced many challenges in her life, but often told us reassuringly in later years that she had lived a full life and that she was content, saying: “My kids grew up up well and are happily married. I have done everything I wanted to do. I am ready for what will come next. I am ready.” Ruth will be remembered by those who knew her well, for her love of people, country;, her generosity, sense of adventure, fun and wit.

Ruth leaves behind a daughter and son-in-law, Barbara Iverda (Beecher) Ensslin and Robert Frank Ensslin III of Oakland Park FL, her son and daughter-in-law, William Gordon Beecher and Darlene Wendy (Greene) Beecher of Garland, Texas, her nephew, Raymond Edward Banks and wife, Patricia Ann (Boland) Banks, and their son Steven Alan Banks of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Notes from the family about memorials and disposition:

This website is a living memorial that will remain open in perpetuity in Ruth's honor. Coming soon are clips of Ruth's 2004 Veteran's Oral history interview and information about her scattering at sea which is expected to take place sometime in 2021 once she is assigned to a deploying naval vessel. Ruth's urn was delivered on October 21 in person by her daughter and son-in-law to the Norfolk, Virginia Naval Hospital's Burial at Sea team. She is in good hands and exactly where she should be.

For those who wish to honor Ruth beyond this on-line, tax deductible contributions may be made towards the work of the U.S. Navy Memorial and Ruth's permanent bronze plaque which will be displayed at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. A commemoration ceremony with take place following her burial and the dedication of the plaque.