November 13, 1929 – June 26, 2023
Alice Ruth Kiel, known as Ruth, 93 years old, died on June 26, 2023, at Morningside Manor at Menger Springs in Boerne, Texas. Cause of death was pneumonia and its complications.
Ruth was born November 13, 1929, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Rev. Ralph G. White and Alice G. Eyer. She graduated from South Hills High School at Pittsburgh in 1947. She earned a B.S. in Primary Education from Mount Union College at Alliance, Ohio, in 1951. She became a schoolteacher, serving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Arlington, Virginia; and Montgomery County, Maryland.
She married medical student Frank W. Kiel in 1952. A career in the U.S. Army for twenty-four years followed, with stations in Hawaii, Fort Sam Houston, Washington D.C. (including one year when her husband was deployed to Vietnam), and Germany.
After her time as an Army wife, she lived six years in Houston, and six years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and then returned to a small ranch near Comfort, Texas.
Community activity at Comfort started with the Comfort Public Library of which she became President of the Board of Trustees and led in its major renovation. She subsequently served the Comfort Heritage Foundation of which she became President of the Board of Directors and led the acquisition of the abandoned Brownsboro Cemetery.
Volunteer work with Pathologists Overseas involved assignments in Kenya, St. Lucia, Nepal, and Madagascar (where she served as the annual auditor and patroness 1999–2018).
Publications were: five audio travelogues about the countryside around Comfort (1907), a local history Comfort (2011), a family history Jeremiah White—A First Family of Ohio (2016), an autobiography Memoir (2017), and an account of her overseas volunteer work Twenty Years of Surgical Pathology in Madagascar (2018).
Survivors are three sons and their wives: Jeffrey and Josette Kiel of Boerne, Texas; David and Simone Kiel of Fort Worth, Texas, and Douglas and Laura Kiel of San Antonio, Texas. There are five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Interment will be at Fort Sam Houston Cemetery on 5 July at 10:15 AM. Reception to follow afterwards.
Contributed by husband Col. Frank W. Kiel.
You are invited to sign the Guestbook at www. porterloring.com.
Arrangements with: PORTER LORING MORTUARY, 1101 McCullough AVE., SAN ANTONIO, TX 78212 – 210-227-8221
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