Ruth Gwendolyn Hahm was born at home in Chicago, IL to Edward and Esther Hahm on August 29, 1918. She was the first of two daughters. Her sister, Edna , was born in June of 1920. Ruth and Edna grew up on Wayne Avenue in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. Their father drove a streetcar for the City of Chicago.
Ruth attended Hayt Elementary School, Sullivan Junior High School and graduated from Senn High School in June of 1937. She began high school with a focus on languages but shifted to a focus on commercial studies including typing and shorthand because those were the available jobs. She loved reading and sports, including ping pong, volleyball, softball and speed skating.
As a very young child, Ruth’s mom would take her and her sister to Moody Sunday School. It was here that she learned that Jesus Christ loved her and gave His life for her. She would come to know Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior at a young age and that decision would define the rest of her life.
Upon graduating from high school, college was out of the question, so she applied for a job and eventually was hired to work for Marshall Fields & Company. After nine years at Marshall Fields, she would take a job at Purity Bakeries on Michigan Avenue, where she would begin to develop her accounting skills. These skills would serve her well, later in life when she would work for an accounting firm and for Swedish Covenant Hospital in the Public Aid Department. Ruth would take an accounting class at Northwestern University and later earn her Associates Degree from Wilbur Wright Junior College in Chicago.
Moody Church would play an important part in her life as did her love for softball. For several years she would keep score of the church men’s softball games and it was here that she met Robert Erickson. They would begin dating in 1947 and were married on September 11, 1948. Less than a year later, in July of 1949, they would have their first, Donald Arthur. Their second son, Richard Earl would be born in April of 1951 and their third son, Thomas Edward, would be born in September, 1955.
Bob and Ruth would live almost all of their married life in Chicago, including 60 years in the same house on Rogers Avenue in the Sauganash neighborhood. During those years, Ruth was a great mom, raising three sons, as dad spent long hours working for A.A. Erickson Bros. as a contractor engineer. Both of them loved the Lord and faithfully served Him at Moody Church throughout their married life and modeled a godly marriage at home.
Ruth was blessed with a wonderful family that not only included her three sons, but three daughters-in-law, Claudia, Joanne, and Penny, eight grandchildren, Christine, Rebekah, Kara, Ryan, Paul, Julie, Britta and Ingrid and eight great grandchildren, Mia, Madison, Theodore, Gwen, John, Luke, Caleb, and Annika.
In October of 2017, Bob and Ruth moved to Three Oaks Assisted Living in Cary, IL. In January of 2018, dad passed away following a short battle with congestive heart failure. They had celebrated their 69th anniversary just a few months earlier. Ruth would be diagnosed with abdominal cancer, have surgery at the age of 99 to have the tumor removed, go through radiation and live another two years until the reoccurrence of the cancer and congestive heart failure would finally overtake her 101 year old body. Once Bob entered heaven, Ruth’s greatest desire was to be with her Savior and the man she had devoted her life to for all those years. On April 14, 2020, she got her wish as God called her home to glory.
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