Obituary of Ruth Ratcliffe Wood

Ruth Ratcliffe Wood of Chapel Hill died Thursday, May 17 at the age of 96 following a brief illness. A longtime Chapel Hill resident, first in the 1950s and early 1960s and again since the late 1970s, she was well known in both town and university circles. She was the widow of Dr. Ernest H. Wood, former Professor and Chair of Radiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Born Ruth Eleanor Ratcliffe on Nov. 29, 1915 in Melrose, MA, she was the seventh of eight children of Edward and Annie Ratcliffe. She trained as a Registered Nurse at New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in Boston and met Dr. Wood, a New Bern, N.C. native who recently had graduated from Harvard University School of Medicine, when they worked a surgical shift together. The couple married in August 1941. During World War II, when Dr. Wood was stationed in England as a physician with the U.S. Army Air Corps, she worked as head nurse in the Red Cross blood bank in New York City. Retiring from nursing shortly after the war with the birth of her first child, she began raising her family in New York, where her husband was on the medical faculty at Columbia University, and in suburban New Jersey. The family moved to Chapel Hill in 1952 when Dr. Wood became the founding Chair of the Department of Radiology at the new School of Medicine. With the exception of the 1962-63 academic year, when the family lived in London, England where Dr. Wood was pursuing research, she lived in Chapel Hill until 1965, then moved to Ridgewood, N.J. when her husband returned to Columbia. Following Dr. Wood's death in 1975, she returned to Chapel Hill in 1979. An ardent Tar Heel fan, frequent bridge player, hospital volunteer and skilled knitter who for years created blankets and caps for ill newborn children, she was active in the University Methodist Church and P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization). She maintained a wide circle of close friends, many of whom, like herself, were from UNC medical school families, and she was a faithful correspondent with friends worldwide. In addition to the family's year in England, she enjoyed return trips to Europe on several occasions. She traveled regularly to her native Massachusetts, vacationing at the beach where she could visit with her brothers and sisters She was a devoted mother and grandmother and had the good fortune to live near all of her grandchildren when they were young, allowing her to take an active role in their care. Ruth Wood is survived by three children, Ernest H. Wood, III of Austin, TX; William E. Wood of Whiteville; and Janet Wood Evans of Chapel Hill; and by five grandchildren: Emily Wood Jakobeit of Austin; Sarah Wood Bronski of Hartford CT; William M. Wood of Willimantic, CT; and Kathleen Evans and Scott Evans of Chapel Hill. Funeral services will be at University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, May 20, followed by a reception at the church and then internment in Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. Funeral arrangements are by Walker's Funeral Home of Chapel Hill. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to The Ernest and Ruth Wood Fund for Advancement of Neuroradiology, Medical Foundation of NC, Inc., 880 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill, NC 27514-9862.