Ruth Gottlieb Moore

COLUMBIA Ruth Gottlieb Moore of Columbia, S.C. died on Wednesday, December 27, 2017. She was 99. She was widely known in the Columbia area as The Story Lady on radio and television in the 1940s and 1950s and as the Grand Dame of Columbia theater with a long career of over fifty years on the stages of Town, Workshop, Trustus, and University theaters. She also appeared numerous times at the Opera House in Abbeville, Blowing Rock, Appalachian State University, and toured with a summer stock company, The Creative Enterprises. Even at the age of eighty-eight, she played the lead in The Trip To Bountiful at the Workshop theater in November of 2006. Among her favorite plays were Driving Miss Daisy which she did five times, Grace and Gladys which she did three times, as well as On Golden Pond and The Gin Game. Her other favorites included The Last of Mrs. Lincoln, Lost in Yonkers, Death of a Salesman, The Road to Mecca, and Painting Churches. She was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and appeared in The Heat of The Night, A Special Friendship, and Traxx plus many radio and TV commercials. She was a consummate actress who embraced each of her roles with the desire to make each and every character part of herself. During her busy life, Mrs. Moore was engaged at various times with work at The Voice of America in Pakistan, Director of the Job Corps Screening Program in South Carolina, Mutual Fund Registered Representative, Director of Volunteers at Richland Memorial Hospital and Providence Hospital. She was Columbia's Young Woman of the Year in 1952, star of her own TV interview program Woman to Woman on WIS in the 1960s where she interviewed such people as Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles, Andy Griffith, and David Brinkley. She was born in New York City on August 7, 1918, the daughter of Minnie and Jack Gruberg. Her father died in 1925 and her mother then married Albert Fields in 1928. She moved to Columbia from New York and was married for eighteen years to Ralph Gottlieb. They had three children. He predeceased her in 1958. She married Dr. Raymond A. Moore, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at USC in 1961. Dr. Moore predeceased her in 2013. She was also predeceased by her daughter, Nancy Reeves. Surviving are her children, Dr. and Mrs. Jack Gottlieb and Mr. and Mrs. Joel Gottlieb of Columbia; her grandchildren, Aimee and Allen Stewart, Kyle and Heather Reeves, Robin Gottlieb, Ryan and Mary Katherine Gottlieb, and Ralph Gottlieb of Columbia, and Julie and Jonathan Fisher of Charlotte, NC; and her great-grandchildren, Greer, Hayes, and Reid Stewart; Olivia and Kade Reeves; Noah, Jonas, and Evelyn Fisher; and Maya and Ethan Gottlieb. She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother whose many gifts as an actress, story teller, punster extraordinary, cross word puzzle fanatic, business woman, and captivating personality will be sorely missed by her family, her many friends and relatives, and theater goers. Her blithe spirit will live in the memory of many for years to come. A graveside service will be held in Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery at 11:00 a.m. Friday, December 29, 2017. Dunbar Funeral Home, Devine Street Chapel, is assisting the family.