Obituary: Ruth Schaeffer – The Ithaca Voice

Ruth Thayer Schaeffer, 85, a native of Ithaca, died at home in Goleta, California, on June 21, 2024, from complications of vascular dementia. Despite her age, Ruthie remained youthful and attractive throughout most of her life.

She was born on October 12, 1938, in Ithaca, NY to frugal and loving parents Fred and Bernice Thayer. Her father was a coal dealer. Her mother kept the office books. Ruthie’s close ties with her extended family and friends in Ithaca and the nearby small town of Danby, where she grew up, helped shape her into the loving, devoted and fun-loving person she became.

Ruthie remembered her mother, who was the church organist for 35 years, looking out the kitchen window at the hills behind her house. She said, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains – from whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

The emotional lyrics of the bluegrass country song “Hills of Home” come to mind:

“Don’t you feel the hills around you
Don’t you feel the touch of home
Don’t you wish you had never left
There are things that memories cannot bring home
Hills of the Homeland Hills of the Homeland
Families scattered and disappeared
These old hills that have passed
Well, they’ve had enough goodbyes in their lives.”

However, with Ithaca College and Cornell University nearby, there were also high expectations for students, who had to work hard to achieve and help others. One of Thayer’s neighbors was Wilson Greatbatch, the Cornell University engineering graduate who invented the first successful implantable pacemaker. Ruthie remembers visiting his barn and watching Wilson tinker at his workbench. He was also able to get the projector working for the kids on Friday nights at the local town hall.

After graduating from Ithaca High School, Ruthie attended SUNY Cortland and studied elementary education. After graduating, she taught 3^rd grade in Greece, NY, and then went to Syracuse University where she earned a master’s degree in developmental reading. From there, she taught at an inner-city school in New Haven, Connecticut, and then spent several years as a reading consultant in the Hartford public schools.

In Syracuse, Ruthie met her future husband, Bernie, whom she married in 1966. While living in East Granby, north of Hartford, their two children were born, and when they were still preschoolers, the family moved to California, where Bernie earned a master’s degree in public health at Berkeley. In 1975, the Schaeffers moved to the Santa Barbara area, bought a home, and started their family.

Ruthie taught at a reading clinic in Santa Barbara for several years, then tutored at home, fitting her schedule around the children’s extracurricular activities. She also taught piano and flute, the instrument she had played since high school in a prestigious band program that earned her a visit from Benny Goodman. She continued to play flute in a chamber group each week. Membership in AAUW, participation in a long-running Women’s Tuesday Breakfast Group, and volunteering to support Santa Barbara Postpartum Education for Parents all meant a great deal to Ruthie.

Ruthie’s life consisted of the role of a devoted mother and loving wife, spending special occasions with her grandchildren, supporting her adult children through difficult times, making numerous train and air trips across the country to visit family, spending years camping in a trailer, participating in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church activities, helping care for Bernie’s father in his later years, attending every class reunion, dinner and social gathering with close friends, supporting the musical and other careers of family members, appreciating the importance of a good education, making vacation trips almost everywhere in this country and to many other destinations around the world.

But one of the last things Ruthie said before she died was, “When am I going home?”

No matter what professional, social or family activities Ruthie pursued, she was never overly ambitious, unyielding or reserved, but almost always approached life with an open-minded, caring and accepting attitude. Most importantly, however, no matter where she went and what she did, she never forgot the old hills around her; she never forgot the touch of home!

Ruthie leaves behind her husband Bernie Schaeffer, children Jon Schaeffer and Amy Goodshaw, a brother Fred Martin Thayer, and grandchildren Sophia Schaeffer and Elliot Schaeffer.

A celebration of life in the Santa Barbara area for family and friends will be announced at a later date. Gifts in Ruthie’s memory may be made to the Alpha Resource Center, 4501 Cathedral Oaks Rd., Santa Barbara, CA 93110.

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