Ruth Hill Stone

Ruth Evelyn Hill Stone, age 107, was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts on March 16, 1917. Her parents were Raymond Putnam Hill and Carrie Belle Mills Howard. She had one brother, Robert Lincoln Hill. During Ruth’s youth, her family moved to Glen Rock, New Jersey, where she attended Ridgeview High School; she graduated in 1935. Her favorite summers were spent at Sergeant Camp which was run by Boston College. Her favorite activities there were playing basketball, jumping hurdles and pole vaulting.

Ruth attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and joined Gamma Phi Beta sorority where many of her friends were athletes. Many friends have been entertained by Ruth’s wonderful story of traveling by car in 1937 with a sorority sister, from Winter Park to a sorority convention in California. This was quite an adventure for two young women in a time when lodging was found in rooms rented in private homes and the national highway system would not exist for another two decades.

Upon graduation in 1939, Ruth married Henry George Carrison of Jacksonville, Florida, the father of her three children. They lived in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

In 1952 Ruth married Tillman (Till) Price Stone of Birmingham, Alabama. They lived in the Jacksonville area, Charleston, South Carolina, and finally in Cashiers, North Carolina. Till died in 1996 and in 2004, Ruth moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, Jane and David Bockel. She lived with them in Fairfax, Virginia and Smyrna, Georgia where she became friends with their friends who added to her enjoyment of her life.

Ruth loved the arts, children and animals. She was a homemaker most of her life, but loved to volunteer in a friend’s school and at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville.

Ruth is survived by her children, Jordan Dwight Carrison (Virginia Weaver and Nancy Starbard, both deceased), Jane Carrison Bockel (David) and Daniel Griffin Carrison. Her grandchildren are Sarah Bockel Smith (Solomon) and David Robert Bockel, Jr. (Jane). Her great grandchildren are Abigail Evelyn Smith, Eleanora Charlotte Smith, Lillian Elizabeth Bockel, and Zoe Madeleine Bockel. She also had many step children and step grandchildren.

The family would like to thank the following for the great care they gave to Ruth during her last years and months: Deborah Knott and Lottie Miller of Deborah’s Touched by an Angel and Golden Rule Hospice.

Ruth’s favorite charities include Christ Church of Atlanta (Anglican); SHARE Military Initiative at The Shepherd Spinal Center, Atlanta; Samaritan’s Purse and FIDF (Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces).

Her ashes will be interred with those of her husband in a private service with immediate family at Church of The Good Shepherd in Cashiers, North Carolina.