Ruth Elizabeth Mosier

January 1, 1936 - May 8, 2018

Our mother, Ruth Elizabeth Mosier (née Rodgers), died peacefully on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, while in residence at Pacifica Senior Living in Paradise Valley, Arizona. She was 82 years old.

Ruth, daughter of Clinton and Ruth (Colyer) Rodgers, was born on her family's farm near Frankfort, Indiana, on January 1, 1936, and celebrated as the first baby born in Clinton County that year. As Mom told the story, "The doctor came out from a New Year's party--my dad said he was three sheets to the wind." The fourth of five children, she grew up in a two-story house next to a red barn, a mile and a cornfield away from her maternal grandparents. As a child, she loved playing with her siblings (Ed, Bill, Mary, and Janet), reading, and attending summer Baptist church camp. She learned to drive on a tractor, and knew how to milk a cow, plow a field, de-tassel corn, and roll a tight cigar from whole tobacco leaves. Nicknamed "Freck" for her fair-skinned face full of freckles, she played piano expertly and was a 4-H Club blue-ribbon baker.

A 1953 graduate of Jackson Township High School, Ruth attended Purdue University, where she was a liberal arts major in the School of Science. There, she met our father, Russell Mosier, in government class. "I kicked the back of his chair while crossing my legs," she fondly recalled. "He waited for me after class and asked if I'd done it on purpose! After that, we were never apart." Their marriage lasted 58 years, until our father's death in 2014.

Dad's Army service brought the newlyweds to Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia, where they rented an apartment off the base, and Mom worked in accounting at Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. Their first home was in Peoria, Illinois, where Dad worked for Caterpillar and Mom gave birth to two children (Andrew and Elizabeth). After a move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, our family settled in Phoenix, Arizona, where Dad took a job with Empire Machinery and their third child, son Paul, was born.

Homesick for the Midwest, Mom filled our ranch-style house with framed family photos and portraits of ancestors, and always kept a block of lard for homemade pie crust in our refrigerator. She traveled to Indiana for funerals, happily hosted our Hoosier relatives in Phoenix (especially during the winter months), researched and documented her genealogy, and gave her children the gift of carefree summers at her sister Janet's house in Bedford, Indiana.
As our father's career progressed, Mom earned a real estate license and launched a long career selling homes--first, as a resale agent and later, as a broker--that fortuitously coincided with the city's building boom. Gregarious and trustworthy, she befriended clients and made sales commissions that helped put her three children through college unburdened by loans. She cultivated a second, simultaneous "career" as a reader, visiting the public library regularly and amassing a personal book collection of more than 6,000 volumes, which were shelved on floor-to-ceiling bookcases in almost every room of our house. Her other passions included playing bridge, doing crossword puzzles, rooting for the Phoenix Suns, and adopting stray and rescue dogs.

A generous and indulgent grandparent, Mom laughed at our children's silly antics, tolerated messes and roller skating in the house, fed them forbidden snacks, and funded an unforgettable family trip on the Mississippi Queen (a restored paddle wheel driven steamboat operating between Memphis and New Orleans) after she and our father returned from their own voyage on the vessel. Her post-retirement travel bucket list included trips with our father to Hawaii, Australia, the Grand Canyon, Pennsylvania, Indiana, down the Mississippi River by riverboat, and across Canada by train.

A breast cancer survivor, Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2007, and lived for nearly ten years in memory care. She is survived by her sisters Mary Dickhaut of Lebanon, Ohio (Rick); Janet Cunningham of Bedford, Indiana; sons Andrew Rodgers Mosier (Janette) of Tucson and Paul Stuart Mosier (Keri) of Phoenix; daughter Elizabeth Ann Mosier (Christopher Mills) of St. Davids, Pennsylvania; and five grandchildren: Melanie Mosier, Alison Mosier-Mills, Catherine Mosier-Mills, Nicholas Mosier, and Eleri Mosier. One spirited grandchild, Harmony Mosier, predeceased her by six days.

Donations in Ruth Mosier's memory may be made to: the Alzheimer's Association, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Fl. 17, Chicago, IL 60601, https://www.alz.org.

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