Ruth Williams Curtis

Ruth Williams Curtis was the oldest living member of the First Presbyterian Church of Athens when she died on Saturday, September 3, 2022 watching the Bulldogs playing on national television, two months before her 104th birthday.

Ruth first brightened the world in Canton, Georgia, daughter of Claude and Helen Williams. Moving to Vermont with her parents, she delighted in ice skating, snow skiing and oil painting. Returning to her roots, she was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women, the first public college of liberal arts for women. With war imminent, she moved to Washington, DC, to work at the State Department for a career diplomat who was soon named ambassador to Nicaragua.

In Managua she met and married James Woodrow Curtis, a varsity swimmer at the University of Georgia and a UGA Law School graduate who arrived in Managua as legal attaché. Ruth’s duties included serving as labor attaché. After stops in Lima, Peru, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, the couple returned to FBI headquarters in Washington after the war, where Jimmy, the first of “the three wild Indians”, was born.

The young family was completed in St. Louis, Missouri, with the births of Bruce and Lee.

Ruth is survived by her three sons, her niece Kay Trogdon Hightower of Thomaston, Georgia, her nephew Bobby Williams and niece Debbie Williams, grandchildren Robert Curtis and Grace Curtis Pippin, and great-grandchildren Emma and Dorian Pippin, and by legions of adoring relatives of all ages.

She will be remembered as a devoted mother for providing her children with every advantage, also as a golfer and tennis player, and after returning to Georgia, as a bridge player and raconteur. She made friends easily, and maintained lifelong friendships in St. Louis. In late middle age, after snow-skiing in Sky Valley, she joined a ski club that regularly flew to Colorado to ski the deep powder. She enthusiastically endorsed collaborating with a group of Athens lawyers to create a do-it-yourself timeshare home in Sky Valley, partly in hope that her dispersed children would visit, and someday perhaps grandchildren. And they did come, with fishing poles and dirty hiking boots, to make enduring memories.

Ruth served as executor of several wills in Canton, Georgia, working herself to exhaustion. When she was returning to Athens late one dark night she ran off a rural road. The family was called to the bedside, and Ruth narrowly survived with only a broken foot and a slight limp. She nursed Jim Senior through Alzheimer’s at home. After his death in 2001, she had both good years and close calls. Her mobility declined and she reduced her activities, but her sense of humor sharpened. She took delight in the visits of friends and family, and will be deeply missed by all.

A celebration of Ruth's life will be held Monday, November 21, at 2:00 p.m., at First Presbyterian Church of Athens.

Bernstein Funeral Home had charge of arrangements.