Hundreds of single mothers received financial aid to attend Washburn University through the efforts of longtime Topeka volunteer and philanthropist Ruth Stauffer, a colleague said Monday.
Cindy Rogers, a past president and board member of the Washburn Women’s Alliance, said 40 to 50 women each year receive scholarship money through the endowed fund set up in 1995 by Ruth Stauffer and her husband, John, a Topeka media icon. Rogers, who co-founded the alliance with Ruth Stauffer, said Ruth was an “inspiration” and loved meeting the students she was helping through the fund.
“All of this came from the compassion and love that Ruth had for single mothers with dependent children, to help them have a better life,” Rogers said. “It was a joy for her to meet them, talk to them.”
Ruth Stauffer died Sunday evening at her home. She was 86.
She was the mother-in-law of Gov. Sam Brownback. She had been ill for several years with Parkinson’s disease, her husband said.
Mabel “Ruth” Granger was born Dec. 4, 1926, in Emporia to Wayne and Mabel Granger. She and John Stauffer married in 1950 in Emporia, and they were married for 62 years. John served as editor, general manager and later publisher of The Topeka Capital-Journal. He served as president of Stauffer Communications Inc. and retired as chairman of the board with the sale of the company to Morris Communications in 1995. He continues to serve on the newspaper’s editorial board.
The Stauffers’ children are John and Kathy Stauffer Jr., of Olathe; Bill and Kathy Stauffer, of Lawrence; and Kansas first lady Mary Stauffer Brownback and Gov. Sam Brownback, of Topeka. Survivors also include her sister, Margaret Robinson, of Parkville, Mo.; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
Ruth Stauffer attended Monticello Girls’ School near St. Louis for a year before transferring to The University of Kansas, where she joined Pi Beta Phi sorority. She graduated in January 1949 after studying sociology and business.
After moving back to Topeka after John Stauffer began working at the State Journal and Daily Capital, the couple were heavily involved in the community. The couple established the scholarship for single mothers with dependent children at Washburn, also helping to establish the Washburn Women’s Alliance.
John Stauffer said his wife felt strongly that young women would have better opportunities for their children if they received an education.
Rogers said the scholarship and alliance began when Washburn President Hugh Thompson identified Washburn as a nontraditional school at which 60 percent of the women attending were single mothers with dependent children. Thompson relayed his concern to the Stauffers, who responded by starting an endowed fund of $100,000, which has since been nearly quadrupled, Rogers said.
Ruth Stauffer received the Junior League Gold Rose award in 2003, according to Capital-Journal archives. The award cited her exceptional public service, including the scholarship for single mothers, as well as her presidency of the Topeka Youth Project, service on the Florence Crittenton Home board in Kansas City and Topeka, and membership on the Ronald McDonald House board and Friends of Cedar Crest.
John Stauffer said his wife also enjoyed chairing the area Rhodes Scholar selection committee, which helps select students to receive a prestigious international fellowship at the University of Oxford in England.
Ruth Stauffer also was involved in fundraising for Topeka Civic Theatre & Academy and United Way of Greater Topeka. She had served on the boards of the Mulvane Art Museum, the Kansas International Museum, Topeka Performing Arts Center and the Natural History Museum at KU.
As part of her work with the Kansas International Museum, she and John were among a delegation that brought “Czars: 400 Years of Imperial Grandeur,” an exhibit of Russian artifacts from the Kremlin Museum of Moscow, to Topeka in 2002.
The Stauffers traveled together extensively, both with friends and on business trips. Their travels included meetings of the International Press Institute in Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, Uruguay and the Scandinavian countries; an Inland Daily Press Association study mission to southeast Asia; a visit to Korea and Japan with former KU Chancellor Gene Budig; and European cruises with friends.
In a 2006 book celebrating the couple’s life together, quotes from their children describe Ruth.
“Mom is very well read, she reads two or three newspapers a day, watched the news channel on television,” Bill Stauffer said. “She might not know what the latest comedy is, but she knows what’s going on in Washington.”
That knowledge came out in Ruth’s strong opinions, her other children agreed.
“I think of my mother as very aggressive, very opinionated, someone who speaks her mind,” John Stauffer said.
Mary Brownback, too, characterized her mother as someone who said what she was thinking.
“If my mother has an opinion, the world knows it,” she said in the book.
Ruth was an active member and elder at First Presbyterian Church in Topeka.
The visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Penwell-Gabel Mid-Town Chapel, 1321 S.W. 10th. A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at First Presbyterian Church, 817 S.W. Harrison.
A private family entombment will be at Mount Hope Mausoleum.
The family asked that memorial contributions be sent to the Washburn University Foundation, the Stauffer Fund for Journalism Students at KU Endowment or First Presbyterian Church.