Ruth Munroe

Deborah Best, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

On October 22, 1996, IACCP lost a devoted member, a former Secretary-General (1986-1992), and an Honorary Fellow (1996), Ruth Hagberg Munroe. Ruth had been battling illness for several years, but fought fiercely to continue her normal activities and her work, usually ignoring colleagues' inquiries about her health.

Though weak, Ruth attended the general meeting of IACCP in Liege, Belgium, during the summer of 1992 to monitor the final steps of the very complicated revisions of the IACCP constitution and to manage the election of IACCP officers following the newly adopted procedures. Ruth personified the values of the organization. She was the champion of students, of financially less fortunate colleagues, of psychologists isolated due to politics-anyone needing assistance. Ruth was thoughtful, caring, sensitive, and warm, yet never condescending or disrespectful. Fairness was her fundamental principle and humor was often her weapon.

While her efforts on behalf of IACCP were notable, her contributions to science were exceptional. Ruth received her Ed.M. (1959) and Ed.D. (1964) degrees from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard. Along with her beloved husband and colleague, Robert L. (Lee) Munroe, Ruth was a creative, competent, dedicated researcher. The Munroes conducted fieldwork in American Samoa, Belize, Kenya, and Nepal. They wrote extensively about their observational methodology and their findings concerning such topics as language and cognitive development, fathering, sex roles and sexuality, infant care, children's work, and dreams. Among Ruth's almost 100 publications, perhaps the most prominent are Cross-Cultural Human Development (1975, reissued in 1994), the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human Development (1981) coedited with Beatrice B. Whiting, chapters in the 1980 and the 1997 revision of the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and a forthcoming book, Newar Time Allocation. For 10 years Ruth served as Consulting Editor for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and she was on the editorial boards of Journal of Social Psychology, Cross-Cultural Research, and Ethos at the time of her death. Further evidence of Ruth's impact on the field of cross-cultural developmental psychology is her selection as one of the researchers whose life and work should be included in the Society for Research in Child Development's (SRCD) Oral History Project. In 1995, Ruth and Lee were interviewed for the project and a transcript of that taped interview, which is not yet completed, will be deposited into the SRCD Archives in the National Library of Medicine.

Along with her scholarly contributions to the field, Ruth was a devoted, gifted teacher. She was a member of the founding faculty of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and she taught there from 1964 to 1990. The grateful family of one student that Ruth, with her earnest, caring attention, rescued from imminent academic demise donated a sizeable gift to the College with the stipulation that use of the funds must be approved by Ruth. In 1983 the Pitzer College Alumni Association awarded her the Academic Excellence award and in 1996 the college established the Ruth and Lee Munroe Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Research in recognition of their long commitment to the field and to their "unrelenting efforts to engage students in that research." The laboratory was dedicated in January, 1997.

Along with Lee and their children, Jonathan, Julia, and Anthony, her many friends, colleagues, and admirers will miss Ruth's fierce determination, her frank but gentle spirit, her powerful intellect, and her witty charm. Ruth taught us much about science and even more about life.

December 1996 TOC