Ruth Napier Obituary

Napier
RUTH NAPIER
July 17, 1926
September 11, 2018
During Ruth Napier's last week of life in early September, one of her sons walked into her room at Laurel Manor Care Center in Colorado Springs and said, "Hi, Mom! How are you doing?"
Ruth, subdued by pain medication and with a throat damaged by a condition that left her nearly unable to speak, made an unintelligible reply. Ruth's son said, "Mom, I couldn't understand. I'll put my ear by your mouth this time so that I can hear you. How are you doing?"
Her son put his ear next to her mouth and Ruth whispered, "Good. Real good."
"Good. Real good," was what Ruth thought life should be. She didn't enjoy every single day of her life but she lived every day of her life at full throttle trying to.
Ruth had five sons. One of them died at birth and, from the blood transfusion that saved her life during that birth, Ruth acquired hepatitis. That affliction kept her bedridden for a year with three sons under ten years old to care for. Her husband bought Ruth a trampoline to use to regain her strength. Rehabilitation went well and over the next several years she recovered much of the strength that she had lost during her illness. But during one of her rehab sessions on the trampoline, Ruth broke her ankle.
Regardless, Ruth and her husband had a family vacation planned. So Ruth -- now with her right lower leg in a plaster cast with a rubber walking device secured to the bottom of it -- and her husband drove their family to Guaymas on the Gulf of California in Mexico.
The Guaymas adventure included a deep-sea fishing trip. When Ruth's sons begged her and their father to let them fish for sharks, their father asked the boat's captain to find a suitable shark fishing spot. The captain complied. The four boys, the oldest of whom was now 14, found themselves putting chunks of fish flesh on hooks and then throwing them over the side of the boat to attract sharks.
For some reason Ruth had refused to wear a life jacket. One of her oldest son's most vivid memories is of Ruth staggering in her cast from one son to the next helping them bait their hooks while the small fishing boat pitched and yawed. When a particularly large swell rocked the boat Ruth, with a personal anchor plastered to her leg, stumbled badly near the rail at the edge of the boat. At the last moment, the captain grabbed Ruth's arm to keep her from falling over the side. Ruth thanked him politely and turned back to helping her sons bait their shark fishing hooks.
Ruth took up ski racing and scuba diving and learned to fly airplanes in her 40's and 50's. She hiked the trails of the Pike's Peak region with her friends and sons and occasionally lifted weights through her 80's. On one of her last hikes, at age 90, she used a walker to accompany a son and a friend on a trail in Red Rock Canyon.
Ruth's interests and contributions extended well beyond physical adventures.
Growing up in rural Kentucky, Ruth saw her all-white church refuse to integrate. The African-Americans who were denied membership in her church formed their own separate congregation. However, the new, all African-American church lacked a choir. In what may have been a first step toward integration in that part of Kentucky, the all-white church choir that Ruth sang in agreed to and did perform at the weddings, funerals and other events for which the all African-American church needed music.
Ruth said that this childhood experience inspired her to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Colorado Springs as an adult during the 1970's.
The joy Ruth experienced from music carried into adulthood. One of her most gratifying activities was singing in the soprano section of the First Presbyterian Church Choir for 32 years. Ruth believed that God spoke to humans through music and so found singing to be a form of worship.
Being raised on a farm meant that from toddlerhood on Ruth nurtured lambs, a pony, geese, pigs, puppies and myriad other creatures. As an adult Ruth shared her home with numerous German Shepherds (usually in pairs), cats of all descriptions, canaries, a cockatiel, several ducks, a fledgling magpie rescued by one son, a chipmunk and the snakes brought home by another son, a ferret and a raccoon. Ruth's harmonious rapport with her family's very spirited Morgan horse stood in contrast to the fraught relationship between the horse and other family members (which included a broken jaw for one son).
But the pleasure she got from relating to animals sometimes disconcerted those observing her do it.
Once Ruth was nearly ejected from Sea World. A killer whale had situated himself at the edge of his tank with his massive, dagger filled mouth open wide. Ruth reached into the whale's mouth with her hand and stroked his tongue as if petting a house cat. A very alarmed security guard rushed over and pulled Ruth away from the whale and asked her to leave the park. After some negotiation, Ruth avoided being thrown out of Sea World but later commented that the security guard obviously didn't get how well she understood animals.
Ruth was born on July 17, 1926. She was the youngest of Wilson and Beulah Napier's five children and was born in her parent's bedroom on the first floor of their farmhouse two miles from Taylorsville, Kentucky.
Ruth became a Registered Nurse in the late 1940's. One of her first jobs as an RN was caring for Native American patients in a hospital in Fort Defiance -- a small town in a remote region of northeastern Arizona.
She and Dr. George L Merkert Jr., the father of her children, were married on April 9, 1950 and divorced in 1970.
Though she subsequently had close relationships with two men -- real estate developer Bill Godwin and, later, architect Bob Severs -- Ruth did not remarry.
In addition to the extensive but unpaid work she contributed to organizations like the Colorado Springs Symphony Guild, the Colorado College Scholarship Committee, foreign student exchange programs and the NAACP, she spent considerable effort making a home for her husband and sons and supporting their professional, academic, musical and athletic pursuits.
Ruth resumed her nursing career in the 1970's working in Colorado Springs's hospitals, nursing homes and on private duty cases. Over several decades she evolved her nursing practice to specialize in caring for the terminally ill. She developed great expertise in providing the physical and emotional support her patients needed to experience gentle deaths.
As she once commented to her sons, "Helping someone die is as close as you ever get to another person."
Emma Ruth Napier died at 92 on September 11, 2018 at 4:36pm.
Four of her sons -- George L Merkert III, Craig Napier Merkert, Thomas Whitney Merkert and Jon Walter Merkert -- and three granddaughters -- Margaux Anne, Molly Rose and My Linh -- survive her.
Ruth's memorial service will be on Monday, October 8 at 11am in the Cathedral Room of the First Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs.
Rather than providing flowers please consider making donations to Rescued Hearts (http://rescued-hearts.org/donate/), the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region (https://www.hsppr.org/springs/donate), the First Presbyterian Church Choir (http://www.first-pres.org/give/) or the Volunteers of America (https://www.voa.org/donate).