Ruth Anne “Ruthie” Furman of Jericho never used email, so for five years I typed her handwritten missives into my computer so we could publish them in Seven Days. Every few months I’d receive a hand-addressed envelope containing a few pages of note-size yellow paper covered in her distinctive handwriting. She favored a black felt-tip pen.
At least one of the sheets was always a letter to the editor about an article we’d written: Her first, on November 6, 2019, was a defense of the controversial “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural on Burlington’s Church Street, which had been defaced. “Vandalism in any form is a pathetic protest,” Furman wrote. Later she weighed in on topics ranging from a local rally against a Midwestern oil pipeline to the confirmation of Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders. She was definitely a Democrat but a conservative one who regularly called bullshit.
The world has one less remarkable person in it — someone with whom I had a relationship but never really got to know.
I could never guess what local events would move Furman to write, but her correspondence almost always included an encouraging personal note to me and a $50 check for Seven Days. Between November 2019 and April 2025, we published 15 letters to the editor penned by Furman. Since the start of the pandemic, she made 25 small donations to the paper totaling $1,166.
She wrote most of her own obituary, too. When her name popped up in my inbox on June 27, I thought for a second that she had changed her mind about email. Once I realized what it was, I felt a pang of regret that has become all too familiar over the years. The world has one less remarkable person in it — someone with whom I had a relationship but never really got to know.
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Obituary: Ruth Anne “Ruthie” Furman, 1940-2025
Furman and I had talked on the phone a few times in the early years, when I called to confirm her letters. Reading her death notice, I wished I’d asked more questions during our conversations. With humility and gratitude, she accounted for her 84 years of life, from a farm in LaPrairie, Minn., to summer camps, marriage and stepchildren. For years she worked as an art teacher at Champlain Valley Union High School.
“I have loved politics, writing, and Airedales,” she wrote of herself. “My vocation was my avocation, and teaching art gave me so many wonderful people in my life.”
A good number showed up on July 13 at the Williston Federated Church for her memorial service, during which multiple eulogies filled in the rough self-sketch of her obituary. Her family, friends and colleagues described a loyal, fun-loving confidant who knew how and when to reach out; a beloved camp counselor who led multiday canoeing trips in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters; a mom who brought “joy and excitement” to her stepchildren and also knew how to control their very tall and intimidating Russian dad. It probably didn’t hurt that she had a voice like Lauren Bacall.
“Ruth kept in touch with everyone she ever knew,” her stepson, Geoffrey Furman, recalled. She’d sit at the kitchen table with a “bottle of wine, cigarette in hand, writing letters all night.” Furman hated social media as much as she loved animals.
Her CVU colleague Sue Frederick called her a “collaborator.” A longtime friend from Minnesota, John Ritter, described her as a “connector.” That is to say: Furman’s generous, expansive reach, and her sphere of influence, extended beyond the ripples she could see from her vantage point — as I can attest.
As we worked on this special Connections Issue, which looks at the threads that tie us all together, I wanted to recognize a quiet master of the art.
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Obituary: Ruth Anne “Ruthie” Furman, 1940-2025
Letters to the Editor (8/13/25)
Letters to the Editor (8/20/25)
This article appears in The Connections Issue.
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