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Ruth Hunsberger always put herself in the way of new experience. She embraced optimism and engaged in regular exercise, including swimming each summer into her 90s. |
Ruth Hunsberger, 97; worked at WHO and as speechwriter
A daughter of Scandinavian immigrants, Ruth P. Hunsberger was raised in households that didn't hint at the intellectual life that lay ahead.
"There were no books in her home, for example," said her daughter, Ellen Hume of Newton. "There was not a cultural conversation going on, but she rose above that and got into Antioch in Ohio, which was a very progressive university. She went from being a strict, Lutheran, good girl to being a very progressive thinker, ready for adventure."
Adventures took Mrs. Hunsberger to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Malaysia before she moved in her later years to the Brookhaven at Lexington retirement community. She died there Feb. 7 of complications from a stroke at the age of 97.
Given neither to grudges nor to sentimentality over the losses that come with a long life, Mrs. Hunsberger energetically approached every change and each decade.
"She was sort of famous in our family for being optimistic," her daughter said. "She lasted 97 1/2 years for a couple of reasons, and one is that she always looked forward and positively. She truly kept marching forward, and maybe it was part of that immigrant background. To an extraordinary degree, she never looked backwards, although, ironically, she was a historian."
Persistent with her education, Mrs. Hunsberger was 50, a spouse, and the mother of three children when she received a master's in American intellectual history in 1961 from the University of Rochester, in New York.
Her thesis, "The American Reception of Sigmund Freud," took a sweeping look at religious movements in the United States in the late 1800s. Mrs. Hunsberger suggested that Christian Science and the New Thought and Emmanuel movements helped lay the groundwork for what she termed the "enthusiastic" reaction to Freud in 1909, when he made his only trip to the United States and spent part of his time lecturing at Clark University in Worcester.
Partway through her thesis, she asked: "Was the rapid growth of the psychoanalytical movement in the United States related to the possibility that psychoanalysis could further spiritual ends, indeed, be good for the soul?"
Mrs. Hunsberger concluded that even though "the psychoanalytic star that shone so brilliantly for half a century has been dimmed somewhat by new insights into mental illness and new methods of treatment. . . . Freud and the gospel of health and happiness are still alive."
The youngest of six children, Ruth Pedersen was born in Forest City, Iowa, though she spent most of her childhood outside New York City on Long Island, where she went to Huntington High School.
"Her mother was a servant girl from Sweden who did cooking and laundry for wealthy families on Long Island," Hume said. "Her father was Norwegian and was a tugboat captain in New York."
In rough financial times, however, Mrs. Hunsberger's family occasionally moved to Iowa and worked on farms with relatives, and she did a stint in the fields during one of those stays.
"She remembered, as a child, picking the potato bugs off the potatoes," her daughter said.
Back in New York, she graduated from Huntington High School and received an award as the top female student and public speaker. From there she went to Antioch College in Ohio, from which she graduated in 1934.
Because of financial constraints, she took time off to earn money for college and worked in New York City as a personal secretary to Mary Harriman Rumsey, who founded the Junior League. Through Rumsey, the daughter of railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, Mrs. Hunsberger met luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eleanor Roosevelt.
After college, she moved to Washington, where as a research assistant she worked on plans for the invasion of North Africa that General George S. Patton helped lead in 1942. She was also an administrative assistant to George W.
While in Washington, she met Warren S. Hunsberger, and they married in 1942. He died in 1997.
With her husband, an economics professor, Mrs. Hunsberger lived in Washington, Brazil, and Mexico. For a few years after completing her master's degree, she was a speechwriter for what was then the Legislative Reference Service, a part of the Library of Congress that those in the Senate and House could turn to for duties such as preparing text for public appearances.
One piece she wrote for Silvio O. Conte, a Republican US representative from Pittsfield, drew an enthusiastic note of thanks when the speech was a hit, her daughter said.
Mrs. Hunsberger also served as a training officer for the World Health Organization and in the mid-1960s moved with her husband to Malaysia, where they lived in Kuala Lumpur and she was a country representative for the American Field Service.
At Antioch years earlier, a professor encouraged Mrs. Hunsberger to always put herself in the way of new experience. Her children attributed her longevity to following that adage, embracing optimism, and engaging in regular exercise, including swimming each summer in Caspian Lake, in Greensboro, Vt., into her 90s.
"She also dearly loved a certain time of day, which was 5 o'clock sharp," her daughter recalled with a chuckle. "She'd get out the gin and the tonic and she'd have one stiff drink. It had to be two ounces."
In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Hunsberger leaves two sons, Peter of Seattle and David of Arlington, Va.; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Brookhaven at Lexington.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
