Ruth Emma Moore

1919 - 2023

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

FREMONT - Ruth Emma Baumann Moore, an artist, writer, and community volunteer, who was a mother, homemaker, and a support to her husband's medical career, died in her Fremont home April 13 – 10 days after her 104th birthday.

She'd been in declining health, her family said.

"She'd always say, 'I wish I'd taken better care of myself,'" said her daughter, Carol Moore. "She was sharp as a tack. Her heart just didn't hold out."

She did indeed take care of herself.

"She ate well and exercised. She was walking with her walker until December. She would walk in and play the piano by ear a little bit," Ms. Moore said.

Mrs. Moore's son, George, said: "She had a lot of inner peace. She had a real positive outlook on life."

A woodcarver, she fashioned life-sized birds, which she expertly colored. In watercolors and acrylics, she depicted nature scenes and landscapes. From every place she visited, she brought home a rock.

For 15 years, until she was 95, Mrs. Moore took poetry and writing classes at what is now Terra State Community College in Fremont. Her daughter put together a book for her 90th birthday. Mrs. Moore wrote a greeting for volume.

She closed her letter, "Today I share my secret," and quoted the words of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, as expressed by a character in his Peanuts comic strip, "I think I've discovered the secret of life – you just hang around until you get used to it.'

"Do your best to hang around. Enjoy my rocks," Mrs. Moore wrote.

She was born April 3, 1919, in Fremont to Carey and Albert V. Baumann II. Her father, then Sandusky County prosecutor, was appointed to the Sandusky County Common Pleas Court bench in 1934 by then-Gov. George White, a judgeship to which he was elected and re-elected until his death in 1956. Her mother was a schoolteacher.

She was a graduate of Ross High School and afterward attended Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. She received a bachelor's degree in social work from Ohio State University and then worked for a year in her profession in Cincinnati.

Her husband, Dr. Leon Moore, was in medical school when they married and started having children.

"It was a tough road," Ms. Moore said. "She was washing diapers in the sink and hanging them up. They had a real small apartment."

After his World War II service as surgical chief at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., the couple returned to Fremont, where Dr. Moore set up a surgical practice with his father.

In time, the younger Dr. Moore became chief of staff at Fremont Memorial Hospital and practiced at Magruder Hospital in Port Clinton.

"She was a tremendous support and a wonderful stay-at-home mother," Ms. Moore said. She was a volunteer leader for Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls.

As a member of the Fremont Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, she encouraged other wives of physicians to join.

She taught her children manners and etiquette and kept them to a daily routine.

"She taught us responsibility," Ms. Moore said. Dinnertime was 6 p.m., and the hospital was instructed only to disturb Dr. Moore for an emergency.

"They knew Doc Moore was eating dinner with the kids," Ms. Moore said. Sets of binoculars were kept at the window, so the children could learn to identify birds. The children were expected to discuss global happenings, with the large National Geographic map on the wall as their guide.

"They were intelligent people and shared that and kept us thinking and doing," Ms. Moore said.

In 1968, Mrs. Moore received the designation "Mrs. M.D. Ohio" and was presented an engraved metallic frame.

"She was real proud," Ms. Moore said. "She helped Dad a lot and his job and the community. A lot of times women don't get the acknowledgment of being supportive."

Her unconditional love meant the most.

"None of her kids were perfect, and she'd stick up for us and be there for us," Ms. Moore said.

Through the years, she had active roles in the League of Women, the Cosmopolitan Club of Fremont, a women's literary organization, Catawba Island Club, and Port Clinton Yacht Club.

She showed a sense of adventure early, in her midteens driving her mother and grandfather in a Willys-Knight automobile to the Chicago World's Fair. In later years, she enjoyed going out in her wooden canoe at the Bay of Islands in Ontario, where the family had a summer fishing camp, or sailing Lake Erie with her husband.

"Ruth was a beautiful lady," said daughter-in-law Connie Moore. "I always said she was the last true lady."

She and Leon Moore married Aug. 29, 1941. He died Nov. 20, 2004.

Surviving are her sons, Leon Moore, Jr., Frank Moore II, George Moore, and John Moore; daughter Carol Moore; nine grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

There will be no visitation, and private services will be held later. Arrangements are by Hanneman-Keller Funeral Home, Fremont.

The family suggests tributes to Birchard Public Library or the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, both of Fremont.