Ruth Mann, 84; formed support group
Ruth (Stone) Mann was in her late 20s and a recent bride in 1952 when she chose what was then an experimental procedure known as an ileostomy to remove the lower part of her small intestine during her 10-year struggle with ulcerative colitis. The surgery would forever alter her body, but never her spirit.
One of the first things Mrs. Mann did the year of her surgery was to cofound, with nine other young women who had undergone similar operations, the Ostomy Association of Boston to inspire and to improve the quality of life for others and "to help each other learn to live with it," she wrote later. They would also raise funds for research and updated equipment. Out of the Boston association, a Friends of Ostomates Worldwide was formed.
Mrs. Mann, who survived breast cancer at 60 and had a cancerous kidney removed, died April 7 of kidney failure at Southgate at Shrewsbury. She was 84 and had been a longtime resident of Beverly.
"Aunt Ruth turned down dialysis," said her niece, Deborah Stone of Lempster, N.H. "Her kids supported her. She was going out on her own terms."
After her surgery in 1952, Mrs. Mann accepted her fate with typical courage but was concerned that her husband, Irving Mann, would be put off by her altered state. She was able to stop worrying, her niece said, after he told her during a hospital visit, "Would I abandon you if you lost a leg in an automobile accident? No! You are coming home with me."
The couple married in 1947 and spent 31 years together, raising a family and skiing the slopes of New Hampshire until Mr. Mann died in 1978.
"Mother's whole philosophy was the quality of life, not the quantity," said her son, Peter, of Stow. "She was a force to be reckoned with. The doctors had told her she wouldn't live to the age of 30. When they did an ileostomy on my mother, it wasn't a run-of-the-mill procedure. The materials they used were experimental."
At that time, patients were given plain plastic bags to attach to their bodies, unlike the ostomy pouches of today, her niece said.
"Mother agreed it was terrible but that you can survive," Peter said. "It wasn't going to limit her. She said the doctor told her that she had to give up horseback riding as a hobby. She was skiing in New Hampshire with her grandchildren into her 70s."
Next to her family and her work with other ostomy patients, Mrs. Mann's other passions were completely different: thimbles and embroidery. She was one of the founders of the Connecticut River Chapter of the Embroiderer's Guild, of the Bay Colony Society of Embroiderers, and one of the founders and first president of Thimble Collectors International.
"At one time, Mother had between 4,000 to 8,000 thimbles," said another son, Harry of Merrimack, N.H. "She made many friendships from around the world from her thimble collecting. Her embroidery was not routine. I can remember the embroidered tapestry panels she made for the temple."
She also co-wrote a book with Estelle Horowitz on sewing tools, "Victorian Brass Needlecases."
In a 1980 Globe interview, Mrs. Mann described herself as a "thimbecile." But she said it wasn't just thimbles she collected but sewing devices through the ages, including tape measures, sewing boxes, and 19th-century sewing birds that clamp on the table and hold fabric in their beaks.
Ruth Shirley Stone was born in Cambridge, one of three children of Joseph and Celia (Epstein) Stone. She grew up in Brockton and Brookline. Her father died when she was 16.
Mrs. Mann developed colitis at an early age, her family said, and her health often interrupted her education. Her son Peter said she attended a junior college in Massachusetts, and then took classes at the University of California, Los Angeles, and later at the Montserrat School of Art in Beverly.
After she and her husband married, they lived at various times in Peabody and Beverly and spent time at a home in Intervale, N.H., where they skied and enjoyed the outdoors.
She will be remembered as a pioneer for helping to form the Ostomy Association, said Sterling Alam, who founded the group's Attleboro chapter about the same time she cofounded Boston's. In her history of the association, Mrs. Mann wrote that the terms "support group" or "self-help group" were not yet in the dictionary.
"In those days," Alam said, "the idea that patients could help one another did not occur to doctors." But, Mrs. Mann wrote, "the world was ready for this new thing."
In addition to her sons, Mrs. Mann leaves four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
