Campbell, Ruth Ellen who died May 30, 2021, in St. Paul, was born on August 22, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois, to Emil F. and Emily Anne (Tyle) Jusko. Growing up in the Pilsen neighborhood, Ruth took great pride in being Bohemian on her mother's side and Slovak on her father's. Nurtured into her heritage by her many relatives, she remained steadfastly a proud daughter of the Czech immigrant world, regularly salting conversations with an apt or sardonic Czech or Slovak phrase. With her parents' support, she sought out and found a church home, Millard Congregation Church, where she snagged her first and only husband, the student minister, Henry A. Campbell; they wed in 1952. He died February 28, 2021. Ruth attended Chicago's Theodore Herzl Junior College and Moorhead State University, graduating as an English major from Iowa State in 1972. Leaving the security of Chicago for the uncertainty of rural Toulon, Illinois, the site of Henry's first pulpit, Ruth, as part of standard ministerial peregrination, would also live in Moorhead, Mn., Ames, Ia., and White Bear Lake, Mn., returning to Ames in 1990 for a much-deserved retirement from the job of preacher's wife. In 2009, they moved to the Twin Cities to be closer to family and a cabin on Leech Lake, where, in her 80's, to raucous cheering from grandchildren, she would jump from the wobbly wooden dock into the water - but no cannonballs. Beginning with her church's racial reconciliation efforts in Chicago, she pursued a path of social and political liberalism. She did ESL tutoring with ISU students from Japan and the Middle East. She opposed the Vietnam War, embraced the 1970's Women's Rights Movement - crediting Ms. magazine for making her a feminist - and supported more recent environmental and racial justice goals. She generously opened her purse to these and other progressive causes, often to the chagrin of her more frugal husband. With conviction, she commonly asked shopkeepers to mute their Fox shows or Rush Limbaugh while she was in their stores. Ruth loved the arts. She was a life- long musician, starting with the sax and piano, and continuing with church choral groups. She used her musical "chops" to mentor her children on the guitar, tuba, and flute, although never as a combo. She created a rich interior life, wherein she painted, read widely, wrote sketches, and enjoyed movies. With her husband, she enjoyed traveling, whether bicycling around town, driving to New Mexico or New York, or flying to Europe. While she worked part-time, her main job as an adult was running the household, generally with success. She fostered an environment of respect, openness, and curiosity. In her autobiographical novel OFFSIDES (William Morrow, 1996) about growing up in a D-I football coach's family, Kerry Madden-Lunsford celebrated this democratic ethos by recreating the experience of having lived across the street from the Campbells in Ames; she described Ruth's fictional stand-in thusly: "Everyone's opinion mattered to Mrs. Camp, who used to instigate "Edith and Archie" discussions on feminism. [while] pounding away on her piano. They had real conversations in that house, where everyone was expected to participate, no matter what your age. I loved it." (p. 44) So did Ruth's family. Ruth leaves the last of her many beloved Boston Terriers, Maxwell the Second, three children (Hank [Eileen], John [Colette], Sarah [Mark]), six grandchildren (Hannah [Craig], Tim, Brian, Hope, Colin, Raizl), one great-grandchild (Leona), a nephew (Greg Fritz) and a niece (Molly Fritz Miller). Please send memorials to: Leech Lake Tribal College at lltc.edu/give/ or Leech Lake Headstart, 190 Sailharbor Drive, Cass Lake, MN 56633.