Esther "Ruth" York

Esther Ruth York was born August 10, 1919 to Frank and Cora Johnson York of the Sitka Community.  She passed away at the Ashland Health Center/Senior Living Center on May 25, 2019.  She was two and one-half months from her 100th birthday.

Ruth attended the Sitka Elementary schools and graduated from Ashland High School with the Class of 1937. She then attended Southwestern College to return home and teach one term in the Bare country school on the Clark/Comanche County line and one year near Burlington, Kansas. Realizing that teaching wasn’t her calling, she returned to Wichita and graduated from the Wichita Business College and worked for Cessna Aircraft.  During World War II, Ruth served on the Red Cross staff assigned to the 231st General Hospital in both the European and Pacific theaters.  She spent a year in Japan during the Occupation.

After returning from overseas, she worked on Capitol Hill in Washington DC for Kansas’ U.S. Senator Clyde Reed and later for Congressman Clifford Hope of the 6th District of Kansas.  In 1951 she moved to Houston, Texas, and was a secretary to the President of San Jacinto Oil and Gas Company.  Ruth then worked for twenty years managing the office of Radford Byerly, an oil and gas attorney.  She retired in 1984 living in Houston until 2002 when she moved to Wichita to live with her sister, Sibyl Mauk.  

Ruth traveled the world extensively.  She was an avid reader and enjoyed playing golf and bridge.  She loved entertaining nieces and nephews in Houston and at a beach house on Galveston Bay.

Ruth was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Jr. League, various book clubs, and a member of Aldersgate United Methodist Church of Wichita.

She is survived by her sister, Sibyl Mauk, Wichita, KS, and eleven nieces and nephews, their spouses and many great nieces and nephews.   She was preceded in death by her parents, her sisters, Frances Randall, Mildred Snyder, Doris Dove, two brothers, John York, Russell York, two nephews, Kenneth York and Warren Randall.