Obituary of Ruth Anne Fish

Longtime Menlo Park resident Ruth Anne Fish died Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, at Sunrise of Sunnyvale.
She was 92.

Ms. Fish, who went by Anne, was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Ames, Iowa, to Charles E. and Ruth Macintosh Fish. After her mother died, she was adopted by Marjorie Hughes Fish, her father's second wife.

She grew up on the family farm in Collins, Iowa, and graduated from Collins High School. She attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, for two years, then received her undergraduate degree in mathematics education from the University of Arizona in 1946. She received a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1948.

She lived in Los Angeles and Berkeley before moving to Menlo Park in the 1960s.

Ms. Fish was a longtime math teacher in California. She taught at UCLA, Berkeley and Contra Costa College before joining the faculty at Foothill College in 1959.

During the summer of 1959, she worked as a resident research associate at Argonne National Laboratory, a nuclear facility operated by the University of Chicago, in Idaho. She studied at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London while on sabbatical in 1966.

She was active in the Mathematics Association of America, serving as chairwoman of the Northern California Section in 1988. She belonged to the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto, Alpha Chi Omega sorority, American Association of University Women and was a life member of the University of Arizona Alumni Association.

Ms. Fish traveled extensively, visiting Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South and Central America, Thailand, and China. On one cruise, she swam laps in the ship pool as it sailed through the Panama Canal.

After her retirement from Foothill in 1984, she volunteered at Filoli and at the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto. She enjoyed swimming, golfing, reading and getting together with friends.

Ms. Fish also was a prolific knitter, often making pleated skirts with size 2 needles.

She was preceded in death by her parents and sister, Margaret Jane Fish Squires. She is survived by a brother, Charles L. Fish, of Collins, Iowa; two nieces, Beverly Squires Thomas, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Sandra Fish, of Boulder, Colo.; three nephews, Bob Squires, of Lakeview, Ore., Charles E. Fish II of Denver, Colo., and John Fish, of Chandler, Ariz.; and her companion, Raymond Strauss, of Sunnyvale.




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