Ruth Dolores Werner Scarbrough, age 95, passed away peacefully at home on October 11, 2018. Ruth was born July 3, 1923 in Rahway, NJ to her parents,Eugene Packard Werner Sr. and Sadie Conlin Werner. She was a beautiful andstrong young woman who lived through some very tough times. Ruth grew up during the Great Depression, lost her mother at age 16, then faced the struggles of World War II. In 1940 she graduated from Rahway High School, the month before Hitler began bombing England. As the war intensified and the US declared war on Japan, Ruth went to work for Merck Pharmaceuticals (Merck, Sharp & Dohme at that time). In spite of everything being rationed from meat to silk stockings, Ruth was very brave...and creative. She painted seams on the back of her legs to look like stockings and went off to work looking spectacular. In 1944, she met the love of her life and husband of 72 years, Abb Llewellyn Scarbrough. They married the month after D-Day on July 15, 1944, and she learned to make a pound of meat last for longer than anyone else on the planet.

Ruth & Abb settled in New Jersey, where daughters Jane Alison and Elizabeth Ann were born. In Princeton, Ruth’s began a life of giving - as a Girl Scout leader, as a tireless volunteer and committee member for the church, as a tutor for those less fortunate, as a caretaker of a menagerie of pets, and as a very loving wife & mother. She made sure her daughters had everything that she hadn’t - piano lessons, horseback riding, ballet, and matching Pixie haircuts. She made animal shaped birthday cakes and planned birthday parties that were the envy of the neighborhood. She made the world’s best bread pudding that cured anything that hurt - an upset stomach or a broken heart.

But Ruth wasn’t just a kind & loving woman. She was feisty and funny and known to kick up her heels with the ‘bridge club’. She sang silly songs, danced in the kitchen, and pinched bottoms. After a hard day, she would tickle Abb until his stern face would melt into laughter. She adored her grandchildren beyond words. And she loved the occasional bourbon with a slice or orange and a slice of banana (yes, all in the same glass).

There’s no question that Ruth is in heaven right now - dancing with Abb and smiling down on the rest of us: daughters Jane and Elizabeth, sons-in-law David Fariello and Wendell Liljedahl, her niece Carol Werner Weidman, nephew Doug Werner, and her beloved grandchildren, Summer, Matthew, Stephen, Scott, Abbey, Collin and Laney.

We celebrate her life, her gifts to all of us, and her new life in heaven.