Ruth Coggin Wood followed her father into service with the U.S. Marine Corps as one of the first Women Marine Reservists to serve in World War II, enlisting in 1943. Through the Corps, she met her husband, also a Marine. Later her two sons followed into the ranks of Semper Fi.
Mrs. Wood, of Woodstock, 90, died Friday at Saint Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta after a brief illness, said her son Dick Wood of Woodstock. Visitation will be at 10 a.m. and the funeral service will be held at 11 a.m., Tuesday, at Roswell Funeral Home, 950 Mansell Rd., Roswell.
"She was the kindest, sweetest and most proper woman I've ever met," said Dick Wood. "She came from such humble and poor beginnings, but she made such a wonderful life. She instilled a love of country in all of us."
Mrs. Wood was the eldest of eight children growing up in the Boston area during the Great Depression, when for a time, her family had to send her and several of her siblings to stay at Boston's The Home for Little Wanderers.
"Being the oldest, she was like a second mother to all of her brothers and sisters," Mr. Wood said.
Her father Sgt. John C. Coggin served as a Marine during World War I, and when the WWII came around, it was natural for her to join, Mr. Wood said. She was one of 20,000 women to serve the Corps, and she was stationed in Washington, handling clerical work and death notices. Through the Corps she met her husband Sgt. Roland Wood originally from Athens, Ga., who had been stationed at the Pacific's Solomon Islands before being transferred to Washington D.C., where they met.
"He told her that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen," Mr. Wood said.
They were married in 1945. After the war they settled in the Boston area, where the elder Mr. Wood worked for General Electric and Mrs. Wood became a homemaker, raising their two sons, Dick and Roland Jr. Both sons volunteered for the Marines in the late 1960s and served in Vietnam. Dick Wood became a captain and Roland Jr., who quit high school to join, became a lance corporal.
"There was one day that three Marines pulled up to the house and walked up to the door, and Mom started crying because she was just certain that something happened to one or both of us," Mr. Wood said. But the men were just there to write an article about her sons, third-generation Marines, for a military magazine.
"Mom said she was never so scared in her life," Mr. Wood said. "But we were all fine. We joined at a time when in America it wasn't the popular thing to go into military, but she taught us about the importance of service."
The Woods moved from Massachusetts to Roswell in 1986, after Roland Wood Sr. retired from General Electric.
She recently became ill, her son said, and they were hoping she would recover.
In addition to her husband of 66 years, and her two sons, Mrs. Wood is survived by her brothers, William Coggin and John Coggin, Jr. and sister, Ingrid Chruniak, all of Massachusetts, and also several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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