Ruth Ault Carr's Obituary
Ruth Ault Carr (92), on February 25th, passed into the presence of the Lord ahead of us “who are alive and remain.” She ran her race of life well to the end and showed us all how to be gracious and grateful even through the painful process of dying.Born in Indiana in 1924 to John and Mary (Bedell) Andrews and raised in Rutland, Illinois, she met and married Wayne Ault at Wheaton College; then went on to get two master’s degrees, one in Elementary Education from Columbia University and one in Remedial Reading from SUNY Stony Brook. She then taught fourth grade for more than ten years and for many years in our home she taught remedial reading to many teenage boys from the orphanage down the street. The ‘open home’ environment that she created often made her dining room table stretch lengthwise into the living room.She also was a volunteer pro-life counselor for the Birthright organization and was for a time a Teen Challenge counselor in New York City for recovering drug addicts.Ruth loved Hawaii where she lived for four years with her geologist husband in Hawaii Volcano National Park. Her fourth son, Gordon, was born there in the small Pahala sugar plantation hospital.After her four sons were scattered to different states from their Nanuet, NY home, she and Wayne moved in 1984 to Memphis, Tennessee, to be close to one of them. They were together active in Bellevue Baptist Church, Bellevue Choir, and Gideons Bible Society.After the passing of her husband, she remarried six years later to Dr. Don Carr, a wonderful, life-long family friend; and supervisor of Prison Fellowship Ministries of New England. They enjoyed four wonderful years together, living half the year in his cabin in Middletown Springs, Vermont, and half the year in her Memphis home. She was very hands-on in the care of both husbands as they were both constrained by Alzheimer’s disease. What a caregiver she was!For many years she carried on her husband’s love of geology by teaching an annual Rock and Mineral class to many of the neighborhood children (and their moms), culminating in a trip to the Mid-South Gem and Mineral Show.After living alone and independently for eight years, she then moved in with her son and daughter-in-law, Doug and Irma, where she lived out the last three years of her life. Ruth breathed her last in the presence of her family and is now ‘breathing’ the pure, rarified air of heavenly realms.She leaves one brother, Ray (in Montana) and three sisters: Joy, Anna, and Mary Lou (in California); four sons: Lee, Ray, Doug and Gordon; 11 grandchildren (including Zach who passed away in 1991 at 21 years old) and 9 great grandchildren.The legacy of Ruth Ault Carr is good and fruitful…but she is quite likely fully engaged and fully preoccupied elsewhere —in God’s blazing, amazing presence!
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