RUTH CARTER QUIRKE (published on February 18, 2010)
| RUTH CARTER QUIRKE Ruth Carter Quirke died on January 27, 2010, at the age of 89. She was born in Winnipeg in 1920, the youngest of three daughters born to Edwin and Grace Carter. She attended the University of Manitoba, was a member of Delta Delta Delta fraternity and graduated with a Bachelor of Interior Design from the School of Architecture and Fine Arts. She first worked for the Architectural Office of Eaton's. This office handled the design, colour work and remodeling of all the company branches from Thunder Bay to the eastern edge of the Canadian Rockies, including Order Offices in the smaller towns. She subsequently immigrated to the U.S., settled in Minneapolis and was hired by Thorshov Cerny, a premier midwest architecture firm. She married Terence Quirke in 1958 and they, with their daughter Grace Anne, moved to Thompson in 1960. Ruth designed and supervised the building of their home, the first all electric house in the city in 1963, several projects for friends and local businesses as well as designing an A-frame summer cottage which she and her husband built on an island on Paint Lake. She was a member of the library committee for the Thompson Centennial Library and provided the colour schedule for the building. INCO transferred them to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1975 and then to Denver, Colorado, in 1979. She then designed and supervised the building of their home in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Ruth was active in the Episcopal Church and was appointed to the Bishop's Commission on Architecture and the Allied Arts of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. She completed several needlepoint projects for kneelers in their parish church, St. John's Cathedral, Denver. She also volunteered for various community activities and pursued research into her family's genealogy. She won first place in the Colorado Genealogy Society's Black Sheep Writing Contest in 1995 detailing a strange story involving one of her grandmothers. Ruth was preceded in death by her parents, Edwin and Grace Carter; and her sisters, Irene and Joyce. She is survived by her husband, Terence; daughter Anne (David) Enderby; granddaughters Julie and Meg; and twelve nieces and nephews. Memorial donations may be made to the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478 or online at www.brainbank.mclean.org |
|
