Ruth Evans (Murphey) Frederickson

RUTH EVANS FREDERICKSON died at age 98, on September 22, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia, the city where she was born on September 11, 1920. Daughter of Ruth Holleyman Evans and Alexander Thomas Murphey, she weighed 2.7 pounds at birth. Her mother died of preeclampsia as she was delivered. Cared for in the Davis-Fischer Sanatorium (Crawford Long Hospital) for several months, this beloved infant’s survival amazed her extended family. Until the 1970’s she was the smallest baby on record in Atlanta.

Ruth lived in Waynesboro, Georgia with her maternal great-aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dent, until age four when she moved to Augusta, Georgia to live with her father and his wife Elsie Wright Murphey. At age 14 she moved to Hepzibah, Georgia to live with her paternal grandfather and two aunts. Ruth graduated from Tubman High School for Girls in Augusta in 1937; attended Augusta Junior College for two years, and then graduated from Georgia Teachers College (now Georgia Southern) in 1941. She taught in a rural two room school in Millhaven, Georgia the following year to pay back her college tuition. Once that obligation ended, she eagerly moved to Atlanta where she worked as a service representative for the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company.

While working in Atlanta, she met her future husband, Evan Lloyd Frederickson of Spring Green, Wisconsin, at a YWCA social for World War II soldiers. They dated for six weeks while he finished training as a medical corpsman at Ft. McPherson Hospital. When he left to serve in the Pacific theatre, they kept up a lively correspondence by mail, exchanging more than 700 letters before Evan returned from active duty in June 1946.

On September 17, 1946, Ruth and Evan were married in a beautiful wedding ceremony at the home of her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Evans, in Waynesboro, Georgia by the Rev. J.O.J Taylor. The couple then moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Ruth worked for the Wisconsin Telephone Company, and Evan attended medical school at the University of Wisconsin on the GI Bill. Over the next 40 years, Ruth and Evan lived in Washington, DC; Iowa City; Kansas City; Seattle; and Atlanta, while he pursued his career as an academic anesthesiologist. Ruth and Evan raised three children and served as mentors to dozens of young physicians and their spouses. Ruth was renowned as a gracious hostess, entertaining scores of friends and relatives at wonderful dinners and parties at the Frederickson home.

After Ruth and Evan returned to Atlanta in 1965, their lives revolved around Emory University and a wide circle of friends and family in Atlanta, Augusta, and Waynesboro. Ruth served as President of the Emory University Woman’s Club and was active in many organizations, including the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), the Victoria Estates Garden Club, the Druid Hills Country Club, and the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. An excellent bridge player, she loved to read, travel, and socialize with friends.

After Evan’s death in 1986, she left Atlanta to live near her daughters in Cincinnati, Ohio and Rapid City, South Dakota. She moved back to Atlanta in 2012, living at Lenbrook on Peachtree Road, just four miles from where she was born. She took great pride in her three children, Mary Evans Frederickson (Clinton H. Joiner) of Atlanta; Helen Lloyd Frederickson (Mark Bonke) of Rapid City, South Dakota; and Edward Dent Frederickson (Suzanne) of Highlands, North Carolina; her four grandchildren, Megan Lloyd Joiner (Anthony Clark) of North Haven, CT; Evan Frederickson Joiner of New York City; Andrew Edward Frederickson (Jaclyn Martin) of Charlotte, North Carolina; Eric Ward Frederickson of Charlotte, North Carolina; and her great-granddaughters Arden Lucia Joiner-Clark and Anna Paige Martin-Frederickson.

Visitation 9am - 10:30am, Saturday, September 29, 2018 at A.S. Turner and Sons Funeral Home, Decatur, GA. Graveside service at the Decatur City Cemetery to follow at 11am. Memorial Service at 12:00pm in the Little Chapel at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, Emory University. A lunch reception will follow the service at the Houston Mill House, 849 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, 30329. Memorial donations may be made to the Emory University Women’s Club Memorial Library Fund, c/o Martha Catherwood, 2911 Galahad Drive, Atlanta, GA 30345.