Ruth D. Ewing

Ruth D. Ewing, 98, co-owner of The Keene Sentinel for nearly four decades, who was deeply involved in community affairs, died Feb. 19, 2014.

A resident of Rivermead in Peterborough for the past decade, she had previously lived in Keene for about 50 years, where she played a key role in transforming Monadnock Family Services into an internationally recognized provider of community mental health services, and also helped define Keene's long-term future through service on local committees.

Her interests in the region were deep, and her interests in the world were wide, having traveled in Asia, Africa, Europe and South America, and she hosted many travelers from foreign lands over the years.

She was born Aug. 31, 1915, in Boston, daughter of two distinguished academic parents. Her mother, Francis Dewing, was one of the first women to earn a doctorate from Radcliffe College, in psychology; her father, Arthur Dewing, also held a doctorate from Harvard and went on to become a distinguished professor at Harvard Business School, which used his textbook, "The Financial Policy of Corporations," long after he left teaching to follow business interests in the 1930s.

Ruth Dewing, the youngest of three daughters, grew up in Newton and Cambridge, Mass., and in 1937 was in the second graduating class of Bennington College in Vermont, then, as now, an innovative institution in the arts and humanities. She remained an ardent supporter of the college.

The year following her graduation from Bennington, she received a master's degree in economics from Columbia University, and entered the field of labor mediation.

She served as director of labor relations of Cascade Laundry in Brooklyn. N.Y., which in the late 1930s was the largest commercial laundry in the world. During World War II, she was a mediation officer of the War Labor Board in Washington, D.C., where she met her future husband, James D. Ewing.

Following his military service in Detroit and Cleveland, where Mr. Ewing helped monitor military-supplier labor relations for the Navy, the Ewings moved to Bangor, Maine, where they purchased the Bangor Commercial, a daily newspaper. The undertaking was difficult, as the market was dominated by the Bangor Daily News, but Mrs. Ewing and her husband pressed on.

Among its more notable marks, the paper strongly endorsed a reform candidate for governor a€" Edmund Muskie a€" who won the governorship and who later served as U.S. senator and then secretary of state in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.

In the early 1950s, after economic conditions forced the Commercial to close, the Ewings were introduced by wartime friends to Walter Paine, an editorial writer for The Baltimore Sun, who was interested in managing a newspaper. Together, after a survey of community newspapers in various parts of the country, they selected The Keene Sentinel, and in 1954 jointly purchased the paper from the direct descendants of John Prentiss, who had founded the newspaper in 1799. The Ewings ultimately acquired full ownership of The Sentinel.

Ruth Ewing was not formally involved in The Sentinel's operations, but she served as a director and occasionally wrote articles about world affairs based on newspaper-related travels that she and her husband made. She took particular pride in helping introduce Sentinel readers to the world. She told the story of a grocery store checkout clerk who remarked on an article that Mrs. Ewing had written about travels in Africa, and who said she would not have read the piece if it had not carried Mrs. Ewing's byline.

In 1993, Mr. and Mrs. Ewing sold The Sentinel to Thomas Ewing, a nephew, who continues as publisher.

Even after the sale of the newspaper, Mrs. Ewing remained involved in journalism through her service as a director of the International Center for Journalists, a worldwide journalism training organization based in Washington, D.C., co-founded by her husband.

The organization appealed to her interests in international issues, particularly involving developing countries, as she believed that international understanding was essential to the pursuit of peace and the well-being of humanity. While she and her husband had for many years hosted travelers from abroad, their involvement with the ICFJ heightened that activity. A particularly memorable visit was by a group of Afghans who at the time were living in self-imposed exile in Pakistan while Russian troops occupied their homeland; the visiting group included Hamid Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan.

Her local interests in public affairs led her to join, and eventually lead, the local League of Women Voters. Drawing on her interests in community affairs, mental health and the well-being of families, she also helped broker the creation of Monadnock Area Family Service. She twice served as president of the organization, which today is known as Monadnock Family Services.

In 1998, that organization held a large party to recognize her role. Program notes for the event said, "Long before systems theory was ever popularly embraced by the mental health field, Ruth was onto something a€" that real healing takes place in the context of a system: family, friends, co-workers and community."

Her interests were broad. She took particular pride in serving on two Mayor's Commissions on Community Goals in Keene, in 1967 and 1977. Starting in the mid-1970s, she served on the board of the MacDowell Colony, the Peterborough artists' retreat. For 10 years, she served on the board of what is now Cheshire Medical Center, and she was involved with the Unitarian Church in Keene.

She was active in a wide range of other fields and enterprises: For a spell she was a student of Blanche Dombek, the noted sculptor who until her death in 1987 kept a home and studio in Hancock. She was president of Family Planning Services of Southwestern New Hampshire; director of the N.H. Council for Better Schools; director of the Center for Chamber Music at Apple Hill; director of the Grand Monadnock Arts Council; and member of the executive committee for the N.H. Children's Aid Society.

For these and other activities, in 2004 Keene State College presented her with an Outstanding Women of New Hampshire award.

She was a lifelong supporter of Bennington College, and served on its board of trustees for many years. And, privately, she helped direct the charitable gifts of the family Dewing Foundation, which often contributed funds to nonprofit organizations that were focused on children's education.

In 1980, she won the Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award. Businessman Windsor Brooks, who handed her the prize, praised her for her "fascinating mix of cultural and human-service interests." He also mentioned that that year she had become a hole-in-one golfer. As she received the award, she said, "Whatever I have put into the community, I have received back a thousand times."

In 2002, following the death of her husband, Mrs. Ewing made several local gifts in his name that corresponded with her own interests. She endowed an annual high school journalism training workshop for New Hampshire schools; the program is run by the New Hampshire Press Association. She also endowed an annual James D. Ewing World Affairs lecture at Keene State College that continues to bring renowned authorities on health, education, water rights, slavery and economic development to the college campus for presentations that, over time, draw many members of the general public.

In addition to her involvement in community and journalism affairs, she remained physically active her entire life. She took pleasure in ice skating, particularly ice dancing in her younger years, and until relatively late in life was proficient on the ski hill, the golf course and the tennis court.

Among other activities that put her in touch with nature, she enjoyed kayaking among the loons on Granite Lake, where the family kept a summer home.

She is survived by two daughters, Carolyn Cobelo and her husband, Thor Schulte-Starcher of Bali, Indonesia, and Tsultrim Allione of Pagosa Springs, Colo.; a son, Thomas, and his wife, Marilyn, of Leverett, Mass.; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.