Ruth Parker Goodenough

Ruth Parker Goodenough (87) of Two Harbors died at Barross Cottages on July 29, 2025, with daughter Mary and staff Sally at her side, after a long journey with dementia and a short journey with heart failure.

Ruth was born on July 27, 1938, to Sydney and Mary Parker in Toronto, Ontario. The second of five daughters, she re-met her daddy at age 6, after his 5-years of World Word II service in the Royal Canadian Air Force. She grew up in Toronto with the exception of one year in Winnipeg, Manitoba – "the year of the flood,” she quipped. The historic flood in Winnipeg was in 1950 and they lived very close to the Red River. She was in 5th grade and helped with the sandbags.

Ruth earned a bachelor's degree in French from the University of Toronto, and another bachelor’s in Education from Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania. BAC centers around the teachings of scientist, Christian theologian, and spiritual explorer Emanuel Swedenborg, and to her dying day Ruth believed that if more people read, understood, and followed the teachings of Swedenborg, the world would be a better place. It was in Bryn Athyn that she met her husband Daniel W. Goodenough, who was studying to be a minister in the General Church of the New Jerusalem. They married in 1963.

Despite a lifelong belief in her own mediocrity, Ruth managed to naturally give birth to five children, and to mother dozens of teens and young adults who became part of the Goodenough household in Bryn Athyn. She excelled as a hostess, and served countless Sunday roast beef dinners to international and dorm students even though, unbeknownst to most, cooking was not her favorite thing! Genuinely interested in “real conversations," she enjoyed filling the large family home with extended family and friends, and to learn what they were thinking and feeling. All the while, she remained supporter, partner, and consultant to her husband in his career as a teacher, administrator, and minister at the Academy of the New Church and Bryn Athyn College, to which they both gave heart and soul. She also tutored English as a second language to international students, volunteered at the Swedenborg Library, and translated French articles into English. Language and literature were lifelong delights.

Ruth kept the home fires burning on her own for a month at a time when Dan and young adults, along with their own children, took wilderness backpacking trips in the Rocky Mountains. Twice she joined the trips, only to remember that she would prefer to stay home.

In 1989, Ruth and Dan lost their only son, 18-year-old Daniel Jonathan, in a wilderness accident in Wyoming. In the long term, this tragedy brought the whole family closer to the realities of the spiritual world and their interest in it. At Dan's retirement, they moved to the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming where Ruth found friends and purpose as secretary of the Big Horn Woman's Club. She also accompanied Dan on some of his pastoral trips in the US. In their free time, they took great delight in square dancing, which they did for decades.

In 2014, they moved to Two Harbors, Minn. Ruth made friends playing bridge and volunteering at the library, and continued to host dinners even with short-term memory loss that made life frustrating for her. Always active, she loved to walk along Lake Superior and the streets of Two Harbors, until illness in March 2024 resulted in a move to Barross Cottages. She spent her final year there, recording her experiences faithfully with pen and paper, trying to keep things straight, dealing with constant frustrations and confusions, correcting everyone’s grammar, and offering bright smiles and intriguing, existential questions to anyone who walked into her room.

With a belief system drawn from Emanuel Swedenborg's Biblical explanations of creation, a spiritual world, and eternal life, she never balked at her own death. We enjoy thinking of her spirit released from her body, her intellect intact, and her joyful reunion with loved ones, especially her parents, her sister Susan, and her son Danny, now gone for 36 years.

Ruth is survived by her husband Dan, sisters Joan, Mary, and Peggy, children Mary Goodenough of Sebastopol, CA (d. Ravi Garimella), Vera Dyck of Guelph, ON (m. Steve), Katya Gordon of Two Harbors, MN (m. Mark), and Lamar Goodenough of Bryn Athyn, PA (s. Barrett Smith), grandchildren Maya and Raj Garimella, Nathan and Amber Dyck, Cedar and Lamar Gordon, and Wyatt and Calvin Smith.

The Goodenough family would like to express their deepest gratitude to Barross Cottages staff whose personal, compassionate care made Ruth’s life as pleasant as it could be for her final year, with her wishes honored to the end. Gratitude also to Cardinal Care for their expertise, presence, and support during Ruth's health challenges in 2024, and to the Two Harbors community for embracing Ruth and Dan in so many ways since 2014.

A memorial service will be held (and livestreamed) at 4:00 p.m. CDT at United Church of Two Harbors on August 16, with special music starting at 3:30. The service will be followed by a reception in the church basement. The Rt. Rev. David Lindrooth of Bryn Athyn, PA., a long-time family friend, will be officiating. All are welcome. As well, an interment and memorial gathering will take place in Bryn Athyn, PA, at a later time.