Ruth W. Beebe

Ruth Beebe was an instructor in Abnormal Psychology at Brooklyn College in New York City in 1943 when she took at job at the Child Study Center of Maryland in Baltimore to be near her husband Gilbert Beebe, an Army Captain in the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington, DC. Born in Providence, RI December 5, 1912, the youngest of three sisters, Ruth was a 1935 graduate of Smith College. She met her husband Gilbert when they both had summer jobs at Rockaway Beach, New York. They were secretly married in 1933 to avoid Smith’s disapproval and remained married until his death in 2003.

Ruth was trained as a clinical psychologist and received an MA in psychology from Columbia University in 1936. She did doctoral work in psychology at Columbia University Teachers College. While a graduate student at Columbia, Ruth traveled to Mexico by car in 1940 to do anthropological field work and made a video of her work in rural villages. She had also considered medicine but settled on a career in psychology. In New York City, before coming to Washington, she was a graduate assistant in psychology at Teachers College, a Resident Fellow at New York College of Medicine, and a Fellow in Psychiatry at the Payne Whitney Clinic at New York Hospital.

From 1944 when she moved to Washington after the birth of her first child until 1984 when she retired from Montgomery County Public Schools, Ruth worked full-time as a clinical psychologist and as a child and school psychologist in the Washington area, while raising four children. In the 1940s, she was the Resident Psychologist at the Child Study Center of Maryland, in Baltimore, clinical psychologist at the Washington Institute of Mental Hygiene, and served as the acting director of psychological services at the Newton D. Baker Veterans Administration Hospital in Martinsburg, WV. In the 1950s, she served as a school psychologist at Beauvoir, The National Episcopal Cathedral Elementary School, at Burgundy Farm Country Day School in Alexandria, VA and at the Alexandria School for Handicapped Children. She consulted and assisted at the McLean Gardens Cooperative Nursery School, the Tauxemont Cooperative Pre-school, and the Overlee Cooperative Nursery School. From 1961 until her retirement, she was a school psychologist with Montgomery County Public Schools. In 1969 and 1970 she participated in and was a leader of more than a dozen workshops on black-white relations and racism. In 1971 and 1972 she served as Family Therapist for the Family Services Project at the DC Department of Corrections in Lorton, VA. From the 1940s to the 1970s she taught courses in general and child psychology at Brooklyn College, in New York City, Howard University Graduate School of Education, George Washington University, Catholic University Graduate School, and Mount Vernon Junior College for Women.

In 1958 she traveled to Japan with her four children to live for two years while her husband served as Chief of Statistics at ABCC, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. They returned for two-year tours in 1966 and 1973. During this time, she worked as a school psychologist for Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Japan and psychological consultant at ASIJ, the American School in Japan. In addition she gave courses in the University of Maryland Overseas Program, University of MD Far East Division, and at Hiroshima University. She was an instructor for the Mazda Auto Company and a consultant for the Hiroshima International School.

In 1960, she traveled alone with her four children, ages 7 – 15, on the French ocean liner Cambodge from Kobe, Japan through Southeast Asia and the Suez Canal to Marseille, France. In Hong Kong, she took her children by bus to the border with Communist China and in Manila, Saigon, Singapore, Colombo, Bombay, and Djibouti she toured the city with her children by bus, taxi, and on foot. In 1975, she traveled with her husband and youngest son from Japan to Moscow via the Trans-Siberian Railway across the USSR. Additional travels included her 1940 trip to Mexico, throughout the United States, Korea, China (where she met her husband, he on a separate trip, by coincidence on the Great Wall), Europe, Scandinavia, and Africa.

Having lost her own mother at age 7, Ruth was a loving and devoted mother to her four children. She was a life-long artist in many media – oils, clay, sumi-e, Noh mask carving, and pottery, to name a few – and filled many sketch books on her travels. A young adult in the Depression, she was an adventuresome and eclectic cook, a seamstress, and a milliner. She was also an incorrigible people lover, occasionally showing up at dinner with a complete stranger she had just met.

In retirement, she sold real estate; she was an exercise enthusiast, participating in weight lifting classes for seniors into her late eighties; and she participated in many volunteer activities. She was a member since 1985 of the Washington-Tokyo Women’s Club. She was also a member of Toastmasters and both assisted and produced many shows for Arlington Community Television. She was also a founding member of the Mount Vernon Unitarian Church.

After her husband’s death in 2003, she began a long descent into dementia while maintaining good physical health. During that time she was cared for in her home by many wonderful and devoted West African women. She died peacefully in her home, November 19th, 2011 in the company of her youngest son, his daughter, and her caregiver, Marie Davids. She was 98.

She is survived by a daughter Beatrice and three sons, Alfred, Brian, and Christopher, and by five grandchildren, Ayaka, Madeleine, Alexander, Jonathan, and Lucero, and two great grandchildren, Emma and Ivan.

Please make donations in honor of Ruth White Beebe to the Alzheimer’s Association (www.alz.org) or to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (www.alzfdn.org).

Arrangements under the direction of Arlington Funeral Home, Arlington, VA.