Ruth Lawson Walsh(1925-2024)

Ruth Lawson Walsh was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Alma Myers, a nursing supervisor, and Raymond Lawson. She was an Ohio University honors graduate and yearbook editor. She joined the staff of radio station WJIM in Lansing, Michigan. She read children's stories and did family features on the air before moving to Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she married Robert V. Walsh. They both worked in AM radio and helped form a local community theater. After coming to Baltimore in 1949, she worked in radio. She once interviewed future president Ronald Reagan during his General Electric Theater years. A Democrat, she also accompanied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt at a meeting of Baltimore's United Nations Association. She joined a group of theater lovers who became the founders of Center Stage. She also performed widely and appeared as Reno Sweeney in a local summertime production of "Anything Goes" at the old Straw Hat Theater. She had a role in "The Chrome Tree," a topical comedy revue that made fun of short sketches on Nixon, the Vietnam War, environmental and racial issues, calling cops "pigs," nuclear peril, the Baltimore "O" and Block strippers. She and her husband became associated with Theatre Hopkins, where they acted together and separately in plays on the Homewood campus. He performed in "Queen After Death," "Charley's Aunt," "The Cocktail Hour" and "The Seagull." After her death in December 2024, survivors include her sons, Dr. Eric Walsh, of Portland, Oregon, and Mark Walsh, of Chevy Chase; four grandchildren; and ten great-grandchildren. Her husband, a VanSant Dugdale executive, died in 2010