Ruth Wansley had never met a stranger. She had the kind of loving disposition that gave her the ability to strike up a friendship with anybody and everybody she met.
“She was a lovely person,” said Wansley’s longtime friend, Ruth Knight. “She was very loving and generous, and she was a good mother and just a really good person.”
In 1947, Ruth Wansley and her husband of 52 years, Reuben Norman Wansley, Jr., started a small moving business in Gainesville known as the Wansley Moving and Storage Co., where Ruth served as the company’s vice president and treasurer.
Together, using handmade quilts as furniture padding and a used Ford truck for transportation, the couple managed to develop the business into a leading United Van Lines agency.
When she was only 20, Wansley was moved herself in an unforgettable way when she was caught in one of the double F4 tornadoes that destroyed much of Gainesville in 1936. She was standing in the doorway of the shoe store in which she worked when the twister carried her away.
“She was sucked out of [the] building as it was being leveled, carried through the air and deposited gently on the sidewalk away from the devastation,” said her youngest son, R. Douglas “Doug” Wansley. “Others in the building were killed.”
On Sunday, Elsie Ruth Kinard Wansley, called Ruth, died of natural causes while sleeping in her apartment-style room in the Loganville home of her eldest son, Reuben N. “Joe” Wansley III, where she had lived for three years. She was 97.
Before her death, Wansley enjoyed sewing, camping, planting flowers in her yard and attending church services, Joe Wansley said.
A viewing and memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at Tom M. Wages Funeral Home, Snellville, which is in charge of the funeral arrangements. A graveside service is set to follow at the Eternal Hills Memory Gardens.
In addition to her two sons, Wansley is survived by one daughter, Constance “Connie” D. Buchanan of Alpharetta; one sister, Geneva Foster of Sayville, N.Y.; 11 grandchildren and step-grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.
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