A lover, mother, traveler, & inspiration. Mary Ruth Kittrell is and forever will be remembered as an incredible woman with an impeccable heart.
Mary Ruth Kittrell, age 95, passed away October 18th from Covid-19
Her parents were Merrill and Helen May Riddick. Her father was a WWI aviator, flight instructor, and barnstormer, who began flying her at age 6 months, and she thus loved travel all her life, having visited 27 countries and all 50 states. With her first husband Richard Kittrell (d. 1995), she raised four children, earned her masters degree, was a chemist, musician, certified scuba diver, active church member, leader of PTA, Weight Watchers, and Parkinsons support group, teacher of middle school science, tennis player, and, with her husband Richard Pease (m. 2003), sheltered 14 people in her home. Her son Lewis preceded her in death and she leaves her husband Richard Pease, children Martha Hicks, Carl Kittrell, and Karen Prideaux, 9 grand children, and 4 great grand children.
Mary Ruth’s Life Story
As Told By Martha Hicks
Mary Ruth Kittrell b. March 18, 1925 d. October 18, 2020
Mary Ruth (Riddick) Kittrell, 95 a 58-year resident of Overland Park, succumbed to COVID 19 on Sunday, October 18, 2020 in the Garden Terrace, a loving care facility in Overland Park. From her birth on March 18, 1925 in Owensboro, KY to the time she entered Garden Terrace, she nourished the people around her with love, generosity, knowledge and community service.
From the beginning, Mary Ruth was destined to live an adventurous life. Her father, Merrill K. Riddick (b. 1895), was one of the first biplane pilots and flying instructors in the U.SA. (one of his pupils was the future president F.D. Roosevelt) and he was a colleague of the famous Charles Lindbergh. While barnstorming, Riddick met and married (on the same day) Mary Ruth’s mother Helen May Williams, a talented pianist and daughter of a Baptist Minister from West Virginia. Mary Ruth was the first of their three children. A picture in the Rochester N.Y. Democrat Chronicle from October 1928 shows her accompanying her father, Capt. Merrill K. Riddick in a biplane. The first sentence reads, “When Mary Ruth Riddick, aged 3, goes to school, she will have begun her education in geography in the air, for she has traveled thousands of miles in a plane, beginning when she was 6 months old.”
The family flew and lived all over America as well as Canada to pan for gold in British Columbia and Alaska before it was a state. Mary Ruth attended schools in Alaska, Pennsylvania and New York, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Illinois. In the fall of 1942, when her father was made Commander of the Army Air Force Base in Birmingham, rather than start yet again in a new high school, she applied for and was accepted at Howard College (now Samford U.) in Birmingham AL without graduating from high school. Mary Ruth had toughened up a great deal from her nomadic life during the depression and already had a way of disarming people with her social skills, intelligence and humor. She joined the Phi Mu Sorority, which became like a second family to her.
Mary Ruth majored in English with a minor in Chemistry. In 1943 she worked for her father, who had been transferred to an air base in Goldsboro N.C, and it was there she met her future husband Richard Kittrell, a Sergeant under the command of her father. Ironically, Richard also proposed to Mary Ruth on the first date. She thought the proposal just a flirt, but she liked him well enough to agree to correspond with him during the war years. Kittrell was transferred to Buffalo, N.Y. after they had dated only three times. An engagement ring came in the mail in October. Richard fought in six war theaters: Italy, Egypt, Corsica, Sicily, North Africa and India. After the war Richard found his way back to his sweetheart on VJ Day and they were married in Birmingham, Alabama on October 28, 1945, four days after her college graduation.
From his training period at the Lowry Air Force base in Denver, Richard fell in love with Colorado and it was in Colorado Springs that the couple honeymooned. They made their first home in Denver. Mary Ruth worked as a chemist in order to put Richard through D.U. Business School. After being a homemaker for her three children, Lew, Martha and Carl, Mary Ruth began working for her Master’s Degree in Education. Richard was promoted in his sales job and he transferred to Kansas City with his family. Two years after giving birth to her fourth child, Karen, the family moved into their new home in Overland Park, Kansas.
Mary Ruth was an amazing woman; one of the first “super Moms” skillfully combining homemaking and mothering four children and leading in multiple organizations: PTA, her Presbyterian church, Phi Mu Sorority, Weight Watchers, as well as being a full time student at UMKC. By the time her youngest daughter was in school, she had earned her Master’s Degree. In 1964, she began teaching at the Bingham JH in Kansas City. She was a valued Science teacher there for many years. Her favorite science was Earth Science and she traveled at every opportunity to study rock formations in as many National Parks as possible. She also taught for many years at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy. She loved teaching and through this was able to earn college tuition for her children. She taught in the public school system during huge civil unrest and segregation but she had a passion for teaching all types of souls, helping her to deal with the explosive situation. She was always open to learning about and welcoming all cultures and religions and spread this message to others.
Richard was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1970. Mary Ruth accompanied Richard through all stages of Parkinson’s disease for 25 years. She was tireless in pursuit of new medications and the administration of such, as well as holding Richard to a rigorous exercise program to help him live the best life quality for as long as possible. Up until his last two weeks of life, she had him on the court playing tennis. They led a wonderful harmonious marriage from 1945 until Richard’s death in 1995. Mary Ruth continued giving her time and energy to the Parkinson’s Disease cause for many years after his death. She not only kept editing the Parkinson’s newsletter in Kansas City and writing her column for caretakers, she also continued giving special exercise classes in the KC area for Parkinson patients. For many years she also led water sport and line-dancing classes for seniors.
Mary Ruth loved to travel, often with her Aunt Ruth, making frequent trips to visit her children living around the world. She climbed Ayers Rock in Australia and toured New Zealand and much of Europe on visits to her daughter Martha and son Carl. With her daughter Karen, Mary Ruth became certified as a scuba diver in Cozumel, Mexico at the age of 72, after being a life long lover of marine biology and snorkeling for many years in Australia, the Caribbean and Micronesia. She was the quintessential explorer who loved to share the gift of travel and knowledge.
Grandson Jesse, from Germany, spent a Exchange Student year with her in 2001/2002. At this time she got to know Richard Pease, a member of her Shawnee Mission UU church, who helped her with advice. They became even closer after Jesse left and celebrated their partnership with a commitment ceremony in 2003. Richard P. converted an old small school bus to be a camping van and together they traveled all the way to Montana and Alaska, visiting all the places she had lived in her youth. Together they also traveled to Japan to visit a former student boarder and took frequent trips to Europe to visit European UU Retreats and visit her children. Richard also provided canoe river trips so that Mary Ruth could carry on with her adventurous life, which she did well into her late 80s. From her daily gardening and yard work, Mary Ruth, at 90, was still flexible enough to touch the ground with flat hands. Richard P. treated her to one last flight in one of the antique planes of her youth. All of her life, Mary Ruth saw her mission as improving the world and was an inspiration to all.
Mary Ruth’s friends and family suffered the gradual loss of her vibrant intellect, sharp wit and generous spirit when it was determined that she suffered from Dementia or Alzheimer’s. She spent her last three and a half years living at the Garden Terrace Nursing Home. She succumbed to the COVID 19 on Sunday, October 18, 2020.
Left to honor Mary Ruth and remember her love are three of her four children: Martha (John) Hicks, Carl (Markéta) Kittrell and Karen (Tom) Prideaux, nine grandchildren: Josh Kittrell, Rose (Bryant) Kittrell-Smith, and stepdaughters Tasha Vigil and Leah Cross (Steven) from her first son Lewis, (Rita), Martha’s son Jesse Hicks (Carola), Carl’s children: Riša, Robert, Raymond, Anna, Alžběta, Andrea and Karen’s sons, Drew Ingersoll (Yulia) and Steven Ingersoll, four greatgrandchildren: Josh’s daughters: Lilly and Isabella and Rose’s children Weston and Aria, many nieces, nephews and cousins, as well as her second husband, Richard W. Pease.
She is preceded in death by her parents, her first husband Arthur Richard, her first son Lewis Kittrell, her brother Keith Riddick and her sister Barbara Ornbaun.
Mary Ruth will be remembered as a bundle of energy and bright shining light by her partner, her family, the community organizations she served, the many students she taught, as well as the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist congregation.
