Ruth Katherine Byrns O’Meara, Ph.D., was born on June 6, 1906. She grew up in Lodi, Wisconsin. In 1921, as a high school student, she won a History of Lodi competition, writing about her hometown. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she was a charter member of the Nu chapter of Theta Phi Alpha when it was installed in 1926, the year she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. Two years later, she earned a Master’s degree.
She took a position with the Bureau of Educational Records and Guidance at the University of Wisconsin and started a Ph.D. program at Wisconsin. While working on her doctorate she served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Nu chapter. She was awarded a Ph.D. in 1932 and continued to work at the university. During this time, she served as Theta Phi Alpha’s scholarship chairman for a short while.
In 1935, Fordham University in New York hired her as an associate professor and director of teacher training. While there, she met another faculty member who was teaching philosophy in the graduate school. William Joseph O’Meara was a Canadian whose degrees were earned at the University of Toronto. His undergraduate degree was from the University’s St. Michael’s College.
On December 26, 1935, the couple married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. The bride wore a long white satin gown with a fitted cloak of white brocade. A small fitted hat with a shoulder length veil covered her head. White camellias formed her corsage and she carried a small missal. Her younger sister, Lois, who would go on to earn a Ph.D., too, was her attendant. A breakfast at the Hotel Brevoort followed the ceremony and Mass.
A daughter was stillborn on January 26, 1941, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Lodi, Wisconsin. Another daughter was born in November of 1942.
After the end of World War II, the couple moved to the Chicago area. She joined the faculty at Loyola University and her husband taught at the University of Chicago. In 1950, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to teach educational psychology at the University of Leeds. Her seven-year-old daughter joined her on the ocean voyage across the Atlantic and attended a convent school in England.
The O’Mearas collaborated on some research projects which were published in educational journals and The Commonwealth magazine. She wrote a story, Angelina’s Afternoon, that is included in Pilgrims All, a collection of children’s stories by Catholic writers.
O’Meara became a widow in 1978 when her husband died suddenly on a trip to Canada. Although I could find no obituary or gravestone on-line, I believe she died in 1995.
