Ruth Long Godshall Clements passed away on Saturday, October 7, 2023. Ruth was born in 1927, and raised in southeastern Pennsylvania. One of six children of Harvey Heckler Godshall and Bertha Nase (Long) Godshall. Ruth had deep roots, going back three hundred years in that part of Pennsylvania.
Ruth had many jobs while she was going to school and after she graduated from Lansdowne High School. Eventually she moved to Washington, D.C. for employment. She met James Frederick Clements, her future husband, while skating at the Riverside Stadium Skating Rink, in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington.
Ruth and Jim were married on April 3, 1948, in Washington, D.C., and soon moved to Cheverly Manor, Maryland. Ruth and Jim moved again in 1964 to Seabrook, Maryland. She took a job at the University of Maryland where she enjoyed many friends and coworkers. Often, at lunch those friends and coworkers would work on The New York Times crossword puzzles, a fond memory she recalled many years after her retirement.
Ruth had a great affection for gardening and nature, which she passed on to her three daughters. She always had wonderful gardens, often containing her favorite flower, the iris. And those irises were sometimes her favorite color, purple.
She was a wonderful cook, perhaps a nod to her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. Her favorite Pennsylvania foods were shoo-fly pie, schnitzel beans, hot German potato salad, hot cabbage and vinegar with ham bone, sauerkraut and pork, chicken bot boi with big, square, thick noodles.
After she and Jim retired they enjoyed many years of traveling around North America and all over the world. Recently she had reminisced that her favorite destination was Egypt. In 1991 Ruth and Jim had a house built in Sugarmill Woods, Citrus Florida, and moved in soon after. They thoroughly enjoyed living in Florida.
Ruth was preceded in death by her husband, James Frederick Clements and her siblings, Harold Long Godshall (Blanche), Russell Long Godshall (Cynthia), Kathryn Long Godshall (Walter), Willard Long Godshall (Dorothy), Ruth Long Godshall (James), Esther Long Godshall (William). She is survived by daughter Brenda Clements Jones (Bill), Stanardsville, VA; daughter Doreen D. Robey (Butch), Mechanicsville, Maryland; daughter Jennifer G. Dubuisson (Nick), Slidell, Louisiana; grandson Kevin Bradley Jones (Andrea), Batesville, Virginia; granddaughter Erin Barnes (Jimmy), Mechanicsville, Maryland; grandson Jason Robey, Escondido, California; and grandson Christopher Avery (Melody Blackwell), Covington, Louisiana; as well as great-grandchildren Lydia, Sydney, Conner, Haley, Jack, Riley, Madalynn, Dominick, Aurora, Adrianna, and Jax.
Ruth will be buried next to her husband, Jim, at Florida National Cemetery, Bushnell. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.gracenorthshore.com for the Clements family.
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