West Lebanon, NH – Ruth Zimmerman Bleyler died peacefully on September 25, 2026; she was 86.

Ruth was born on August 15, 1940 in Rochester, NY, the second of three children. Her father, Edward Zimmerman, died when she was eight, and she was raised by her mother, Martha Clark Zimmerman, alongside her older sister, Diana, and younger brother, George.

Ruth’s long life was shaped by her passions for music and the natural world, her steadfast belief in education and fairness, and a conviction that every person deserves dignity.

Music was one of the great joys of Ruth’s life. As a girl she studied piano and violin, and later took up the flute, marching with John Marshall High School’s band and singing in its choir. With two other young women she formed a vocal trio that performed at school events. She joined Rochester’s inter-high school choir, where she met a young man from another school named Pete Bleyler. They dated briefly, drifted apart, and found each other again a few years later at Dartmouth College, where Pete was a student. They married on June 17, 1961, and remained together for 65 years.

Ruth made sure her three daughters grew up surrounded by music, shuttling them to lessons, rehearsals, and auditions, and supporting them with unfailing enthusiasm. She accepted with good humor the fact that none of them quite inherited the singing talent she and Pete shared. Ruth and Pete enjoyed listening and dancing to rock music. In later years, she became a devoted patron of orchestral and operatic music, attending performances regularly in Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and serving on the Board of Opera North in Lebanon, NH.

Ruth devoted much of her life and career to science and the natural world. Ruth fell in love with Cornell University when her high school band performed there, forming part of the letter “C” on the football field while playing the alma mater to a full stadium. She enrolled in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), initially studying biochemistry. She was one of only two women in the major; both eventually left, partly because discriminatory policies severely restricted women’s access to laboratory time. She pivoted to secondary science and math education, changing her career trajectory.

Her love of the natural world was not confined to the lab or the lecture hall. Ruth was an avid outdoorswoman throughout her adult life – hiking, biking, canoeing, cross-country skiing, and, after discovering downhill skiing in her forties, schussing the slopes of American and European mountains for three more decades. During the ’70s, while living in the Midwest, Ruth and her family would tent-camp across the west and southwest, visiting national parks and forests from the Badlands of South Dakota, to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, and points in between. Anyone who hiked with Ruth received, reliably and freely, a running tutorial in botany. She noticed the world.

In her forties, with her daughters growing up and her curiosity undiminished, Ruth returned to school, earning a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from George Washington University in 1985. She then joined the EPA’s Superfund Program, bringing the same tenacity to environmental protection that she had brought to every other cause she believed in. She retired from the EPA’s Boston regional office in 1998, and later served on the Conservation Commission in Hanover, NH.

Ruth was a lifelong educator. She taught high school and middle school math and science for more than twenty years, in public and private schools across the country – from the Punahou School in Honolulu, HI to Deerfield High School in Deerfield, IL, and the Potomac School in McLean, VA. She once observed that teaching was “the only profession where your salary goes down as you change jobs.”

Her commitment to education extended far beyond the classroom. She was a tireless advocate for her eldest daughter Tracy, whose cognitive and mental health disabilities were met, far too often, with barriers rather than supports. In an era before federal law guaranteed every child a free and appropriate education, Ruth made it her work to hold school after school to account. It was among the most important missions of her life, and she advocated for Tracy as she did for every mission: with evidence, with persistence, and with the confidence of someone who knew she was right.

Ruth served on local school boards and remained devoted to Cornell for the rest of her life, interviewing prospective students, chairing multiple reunions, becoming Class President at age 72, and earning both the Outstanding Alumni Award from CALS (2009) and the Frank H. T. Rhodes Exemplary Alumni Service Award (2013). She was a lifetime member of the Cornell Alumni Council and served on the Advisory Committee for the Cornell Botanical Gardens. Together with Pete, she established scholarships at Cornell and at Dartmouth, his alma mater – an expression, in the most tangible form, of her belief in what education could do.

“Why Not President?” Ruth came of age in a world that placed explicit limits on what women could do – in the laboratory, in the workplace, and in public life. She experienced those limits firsthand: at the university where curfews for female students severely restricted lab access and opportunity for women; in the professional world that assumed a woman with young children had set aside her ambitions.

She neither accepted these limits nor pretended they hadn’t hurt. She talked about them and was determined that her daughters would grow up unbounded. She played “Free to Be, You and Me” as the soundtrack to their childhood. She gave them toy cars, chemistry sets, and microscopes as well as dolls for birthdays and Christmas. When one of her daughters mused that it would be exciting to be First Lady of the United States someday, Ruth replied without hesitation: “Why not president?” She meant it. She wanted them to mean it too.

Ruth was dedicated to improving lives. The work Ruth cared most deeply about, in both her professional and volunteer life, was improving the lives of people who faced high barriers, particularly those living with cognitive disabilities, mental illness, and limited access to care.

In retirement, she ran for and won a seat in the NH House of Representatives, joining 399 fellow citizens in a legislature that pays its members one hundred dollars per year. She served six years, chaired the Health and Human Services and Elder Care Committee, and advocated for health care access, suicide prevention, and community-based mental health services.

She served on the boards of the Special Needs Support Center (including three years as President), West Central Behavioral Health (nine years, four as Chair), and the NH chapter of National Association for the Mentally Ill, where she led the Family-to-Family program on mental illness.

Much of this work was inseparable from her love for Tracy, whose life with disabilities had taught Ruth, as she often said, some of the most rewarding lessons of her own. When Tracy died in 2017, Ruth said simply, “Your children should not die before you.” She carried that grief, quietly and permanently, for the rest of her life.

Ruth showed the first signs of cognitive impairment in 2019 and was subsequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In December 2025 she moved to the memory care unit at The Village in White River Junction, Vermont, where she died.

She is survived by her husband Pete; her brother George Zimmerman of Binghamton, NY; her daughter Allison McDonald and son-in-law Jock McDonald of Amherst, MA; her daughter Melanie Bleyler and son-in-law Won Cho of Black Hawk, CO; and her grandchildren Danika Cho, Austin Cho, Callum McDonald, and Spencer McDonald.

A Celebration of Life will be held in the Hayward Room at the Hanover Inn, Hanover, NH, on Sunday, November 15, at 3:00 PM. A communion service will be held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church at 4:00 PM on Saturday, November 14.

Donations may be made to the Special Needs Support Center in White River Junction, VT, or West Central Behavioral Health in Lebanon, NH.