Ruth D’Angelo

Ruth D’Angelo (nee Hershenberg), age 101, of Wayne, passed away peacefully on Saturday, February 4, 2023.

Born and raised in Paterson, Ruth grew up in a house on East 18th Street and graduated from Eastside High School. Given Ruth’s absolute passion for dancing, it’s no surprise that she met the man she would ultimately marry at a dance. His name was Joseph D’Angelo and he was from the westside of Paterson. They got married in 1949 by the justice of the peace and enjoyed a 58-year marriage that was truly blessed by God until Joe’s passing in 2007. After the wedding, the newlyweds began married life upstairs from Joe’s sister and mother in a two-family house in Paterson located at 33 Rockland Street. After fifteen years living there, Joe, who was an engineer, was working on designing a house he was planning to build for his family. At that time, Ruth, who had a job with Meyer Brothers Department Store in Paterson going door-to-door soliciting potential new customers to sign up for the Meyer Brothers charge card, was knocking on doors in the up-and-coming town of Wayne. She was really impressed with the town and so she told her husband that they should consider Wayne as the place to build their new home. In the end they ended up finding an already built home located at 11 Ryder Road that looked almost identical to what Joe had been designing. To keep a long story from getting any longer, they ended up purchasing that home and they moved in with their two sons on Columbus Day 1964. From that day and for the rest of her life, Ruth remained a resident of Wayne.

During the early years of marriage, Ruth embraced the role of loving and nurturing mother and homemaker. When her sons reached an age of relative independence, she sought employment outside of her home. She got her first job with Associated Testing Labs in Wayne. At the time she was one of only two women who had ever landed a job with this company. She later worked for C.E. Conover, a distributor of O-rings located in Fairfield.

Ruth loved going to Atlantic City with her sisters. She apparently liked to get there fast as her son Joe later found quite a few speeding tickets stuffed in the glove compartment of her car. She kept up with what was going on in the world via a daily, cover-to-cover reading of the New York Post. Her most favorite pastime was dancing. She was passionate about it and it almost seemed like she went into a dream-like trance when she started dancing. As a young lady, she could often be seen at the former Fabian Theater in Paterson – a favorite go-to dancing venue. She shared this love with her husband Joe and, their son Michael followed in Ruth’s footsteps and even danced competitively. She was so good that at wedding receptions, everyone would stop to watch Ruth dance. Watching Ruth dance was like going to see an amazing, artistic performance!

Once when she was vacationing in Italy, Ruth started dancing on a little bridge over a canal in Venice. The tourists on the boat in the canal thought she was a paid performer and they clapped and cheered as they went by.

No doubt, even with all the advances in medicine and healthy living that we know about today, living to be over one hundred years old is still quite a rare accomplishment.  Ruth would agree that she was truly blessed. Still driving in her 90’s she’d go visit her son Michael but, being so advanced in years, Ruth’s doctor wanted her to take the written and drivers test again. Wouldn’t you know it? She passed both with flying colors! She was also an unusually flexible gal for her age, so flexible that her family nicknamed her “Little Gumby” based on the loveable Gumby, a claymation character and star of the 1950’s and 60’s television broadcast of “The Gumby Show”. Gumby was known for his ability to bend and contort his body into all kinds of positions and Ruth was still able to bend and contort well into her nineties.

Ruth was a very friendly person who loved to have nice conversations. She could talk to anybody! Never one to utter a bad word about anyone, she always had a smile on her face and a glass-half-full view of life. She was truly a very beautiful woman in every sense of the word, both inside and out.

Ruth was the beloved wife of Joseph B. D’Angelo, blessed in marriage for 58 years until Joe’s passing in 2007. She was the most loving mother of Joseph H. D’Angelo and wife Camille of Wayne, and the late Michael D’Angelo (2020); cherished grandmother of Derek and his wife Andrea, and Evan and his wife Bergelink; adored great-grandmother of Jack, Cooper, Trevor, Chase and Sienna; youngest dear sister of: Belle, Rose, Lilly, Louie, and Abraham (aka “Lefty”) – all predeceased; and dear aunt of several nieces and nephews.