Ruth Mills Zencey

Kind, Generous, And Loving

Ruth Mills Zencey, 91, the mother of Newtown resident Carl Zencey, died February 23 in Normal, Ill. She moved to Normal in 2005 to be closer to son Frank Shaw.

She is survived by sons, Frank Shaw and his wife, Meral Savas, Carl Zencey and wife, Susanne, Eric Zencey and wife, Kathryn Davis, and Matthew Zencey; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. She was preceded in death by her parents, Earl and Violet Mills; her husband, Charles; and brother, Earl.

Her sons remember her as a kind, generous, and loving woman, with a dry sense of humor, who welcomed their wives into the family. A voracious reader, Mrs Zencey valued education, good grammar and community service, and disdained the drudgery of housekeeping. She graciously tolerated her sons’ nagging to quit smoking, which she finally did after surviving breast cancer in the early 1980s. She hated driving in snow and loved being at the beach, a habit she developed through childhood trips to Fire Island, N.Y., where the Mills family had a summer house known as “The Vi and I.”

Mrs Zencey was born on December 5, 1915, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mt Holyoke College in 1936. She worked for a time on Wall Street for First Investors Corporation.

She married Clarence Frank Shaw, Jr and had a son, Frank III. Divorced after World War II, she met Charles Zencey of the Bronx while sledding in the neighborhood and married him in Mount Vernon in 1951. Shortly after, they moved to Delaware where Mrs Zencey took a job at DuPont.

Mrs Zencey was a longtime employee of DuPont in Wilmington, Del., where she worked at the experimental station as a secretary and informal writing advisor to engineers not used to communicating in everyday English. Before joining DuPont, she worked at the University of Delaware library. During her professional career, she was active in the League of Women Voters.

After retiring from DuPont in 1980, Mrs Zencey looked after her ailing mother, the beloved Violet “Nanny” Mills, until her death in 1982. Mrs Zencey was an adult literacy volunteer, tutored students at Commodore MacDonough Elementary School in St Georges, and joined the ladies sewing circle at St Georges Presbyterian and Methodist Churches.

The family plans to inter her cremated remains next to her husband, Charles, in Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., in late May. Her sons will establish a scholarship in her name at Mount Holyoke College.

The Newtown Bee        March 2, 2007