Ruth Aileen Van Meter

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Van Meter, Ruth Aileen of Minneapolis age 90 passed away peacefully on Thursday morning, February 23, 2017 after a long battle with diabetes. Born in Montclair, NJ, she was the daughter of Glenn Armstrong and Ethel Ivey. She grew up in Brooklyn, N. Y. where she graduated from Erasmus High School. For the next several years she lived with her aunt Mildred in Seattle while attending the University of Washington and working 10 months at Boeing on the final assembly of B-29s. Majoring in Home Economics and taking pre-med sciences, she graduated with a BS Degree in February 1948. She returned to New York and worked as a research chemist in Cornell Medical School at New York Hospital. After taking further pre-med courses at Brooklyn College she gave up her goal of going to medical school. She became a home economics teacher, first at the Brooklyn School for Homemaking, then at Bay Ridge High School in Brooklyn while attending night school at New York University to earn an MS Degree in Education. In 1956 she moved to Greenwich, CT to teach at Greenwich High School. Her membership in a canoeing group of the Appalachian Mountain Club led to a one-week white-water vacation on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah where she met James T. Van Meter of Minneapolis, also an AMC member. They married in 1957 and Ruth began a new life as a full-time homemaker and mother. In 1965 Jim's company Honeywell transferred his group to Washington, DC, and then after 12 fascinating years it moved the group back to Minneapolis. For over 25 years after Jim's retirement in 1985, Ruth and Jim traveled the world, often with the Honeywell Travel Club, and gave over 200 free public slide travelogues. She and Jim became life members of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Their favorite family vacation spot was the AMC's Echo Lake Camp on Mt Desert Island, ME on the edge of Acadia National Park. Ruth was preceded in death by her parents and her sister Elizabeth Hansen (Cliff) of CT. She is survived by her husband Jim of Minneapolis; daughter Nancy Graf (Kevin) of Bloomington, MN; son David of Austin, TX; son Charles (Kathleen Cates) of Apple Valley, MN; and four grandchildren: Lauren and Ryan Graf and Caitlin and Carolyn Van Meter; as well as by her sister Janet Armstrong of Chicago, IL. No public services are planned. Please send memorial gifts to Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55403.

Published on March 5, 2017