Ruth Harrell Adams

12/29/1927 - 04/07/2024

Ruth Harrell Adams was a beautiful person in every way possible. A devoted wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she was adored by her family, her friends, and her many admirers. She had a unique ability to attract and to charm, while remaining modest and unassuming. She had a heart-warming smile, a lilting laugh, and an ability to devote herself entirely to whoever she was talking with. As one of her friends said, “I don’t know what it is about Ruth, but she just makes you feel better.”

She was born at home, like her three sisters and brother, in Birmingham, Michigan on December 29, 1927. Her parents were Everett and Golden Harrell. Her father was an executive at the Graham-Page automobile company, and she later spent a good part of her life in the company of leaders in the auto industry. She was an honor student at Baldwin High School where, at the age of fifteen, she went on her first date with her classmate, Charles (Chuck) Adams, whom she would later marry and would remain married to for seventy-four years. After graduation, she attended Duke University for two years, leaving school to join her parents who had relocated to Placerville, California. It was here, in 1949, that Ruth and Chuck, then a grad student at the University of California, were married in St. Patrick’s Church. Their honeymoon consisted of a cross-country car trip back to Michigan, where Chuck was employed as an ad agency copywriter.

Ruth soon became the mother of four children Chick, Amy, Randy, and Patty. With four kids just eight years apart in age, Ruth really had her hands full. But she was an extraordinary mother, able to give each of her children her full attention and encouragement, while at the same time helping her husband advance in his career. She was a gracious host, entertaining both personal friends and captains of industry.

She played a key role in her husband’s success. As the wife of the top executive of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, she traveled extensively helping him contact clients around the world, and always doing her best to keep her husband level-headed.

While raising her family, she lived in a gracious home on Wing Lake in Birmingham. She became an expert swimmer, able to regularly swim across the big lake and back. In the winter, she became a skater, sometimes playing hockey, sometimes skating with her children to grade school on the other side of the lake. She played an active role in their education, even running the school library as a volunteer. Later, she served as a member of the Parent’s Council at both Northwestern University and at Purdue University. Her activities caught the eye of Michigan governor George Milliken, and he appointed Ruth the first female member of the Board of Regents of Oakland University, where she served a full four-year term.

Ruth was active in a number of charitable and volunteer activities, including United Way campaigns. She was also co-founder of the John Fernard theater in Rochester, Michigan and of the Meadow Brook Summer Festival. As a business woman, she was a member of the board of directors of the Wajim Corporation, a real estate holding firm.

Ruth and her husband resided over the years in Michigan, New York City, Florida, Washington D.C., Carmel Valley, and San Francisco. During her time in Washington D.C. she became friends with Senators, Congressmen and administration officials. She often visited the Capitol, the State Department, and the White House, where she was on one occasion President Ronald Reagan’s dinner companion.

She accompanied Chuck on two extended trips to Europe while he visited American embassies as a member of the Private Sector Committee of the United States Information Agency. She quickly won the hearts of American ambassadors and foreign dignitaries alike. She represented her country with dignity, intelligence, and poise. When she was in residence in the family’s New York apartment, she loved taking long walks and watching softball games in Central Park, attending the ballet and Broadway shows. Annual visits to her condo in Hawaii gave her the chance to ocean swim and snorkel. She loved the ocean, its beauty, its vastness, and its sunsets. Ruth was active socially in San Francisco where she spent her final decades. She was a member of the Olympic Club where she played golf, and of the Metropolitan Club where she played bridge and enjoyed being with her friends.

Over the years, Ruth had a knack for being at the right place at the right time. She teed it up at the Old Course in Scotland on one of its rare warm, sunny days. She watched Boris Becker win at Wimbledon in an historic championship match. She was able to chat with Cary Grant when she found herself immediately next to him in a line going into the Kennedy Center Honors. She met Prince Charles and Princess Diana at a dinner dance in London. And she had an accidental encounter with Queen Elizabeth in Windsor that her family talked about for years.

But more than anything, Ruth was a loving wife and mother, always putting her husband and children first as her active world swirled around her. She was truly a light on that world; gracious, generous, loving, and lovely. As one friend remarked, “If you could somehow mass produce Ruth Adams, the world would be a much better place.”