As a young girl, Ruth Shaughnessy Moore lived in Washington during the early 1920s, where her father, Edward Shaughnessy, served as the 2nd assistant postmaster general under President Warren G. Harding.
One January afternoon in 1922, when she was 11, she accompanied her parents to a stage production in the city’s Knickerbocker Theater. During the performance part of the building’s roof collapsed under the weight of 28 inches of snow, killing 98 people and injuring many others. She and her mother survived, but her father was among those who died that day.
After the tragedy, Mrs. Moore’s mother took a full-time job at the post office to support her family. She continued to work for many years, often putting in overtime to save enough money to send her daughter to college.
Mrs. Moore went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University, which she parlayed into a successful broadcasting career. Later she also founded a public relations firm and worked in theater.
“What shaped my mom more than anything was watching her own mother go through what she did in life,” said her son Dennis. “She learned from a very young age that no matter what happens, women have the power to accomplish anything they want.”
Mrs. Moore, 92, of Chicago, a former writer and director for local radio and TV shows in the 1940s and ’50s, died Friday, March 12, at the Admiral Retirement Home in Chicago of complications related to dementia.
As a freshman at Northwestern, Mrs. Moore met and soon after married Rev. Joseph Moore, her husband of 52 years. From 1931 to 1943 they lived in Evansville, Ind., before making their home in Evanston. She went on to complete her bachelor’s degree at Northwestern in 1945 while her husband was away for three years, serving as a U.S. Army chaplain overseas during World War II.
Mrs. Moore’s career in broadcasting began in the early 1940s when she wrote and directed several episodes of “The Baxters” and “To Be Continued,” two popular Chicago radio shows. From 1948 to 1952 she served as the director of radio and TV for the Community Fund of Chicago, the producer of many issue- and family-oriented shows.
Later she became the co-founder of a public relations firm that specialized in serving non-profit groups such as the Lincoln Park Zoological Society and the Chicago Planetarium Society.
“Back then her friends and colleagues were like a Who’s Who in Chicago,” her son said. “She knew Studs Terkel and many of the other great writers from that era. A lot of well-known community activists and politicians were people she considered friends.”
Before her husband’s death in 1983, Mrs. Moore retired to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, where the couple lived for more than 15 years. While living there Mrs. Moore created the Courtyard Players, a theatrical group that allowed her to write and direct many plays performed for locals at no charge. She also was a board member of the Virgin Islands Council for the Arts.
After returning to Chicago in 1985 Mrs. Moore wrote, cast and directed many short plays that were performed for the residents of the Admiral.
“Maybe being Irish had something to do with it, but her love for words is something I’ll never forget,” her son said. “There was nothing my mother enjoyed more than sitting down to an intelligent conversation with someone she found interesting.”
Other survivors include two other sons, Joseph and Brian; five grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
