Elsie Ruth Cassidy R.N.
1916-2019
From this time forward I am free
To be
at one with God and thee.
(Lindsay King, Mount Allison
’51)
Elsie Ruth Miller Boyd Cassidy
(R.N.) lived a long, blessed life and passed away
peacefully at age 103 on April 15, 2019, at Orchard View Long Term
Care, Gagetown, NB.
She was born on April 12, 1916, in the village of Elmsdale,
NS, the only daughter of Blanche (Thompson) and James Miller after
four sons: Ralph, Archibald, Leigh, and Robert. Her father owned and
operated a brick yard, a lumber mill, and a general
store.
Elsie Ruth attended a two-room school in Elmsdale through
10th grade, and then commuted by train to the Halifax Academy from
which she graduated high school. She then studied at Mount Allison
University for two years; however, she broke off her internship in
dietetics to return home and help her mother nurse her father through
his final months with cancer. This difficult experience and the
outbreak of the Second World War caused her to change her intended
career to nursing. In 1943 she graduated from the Registered Nurse
program at the Newton-Wellesley (Massachusetts) hospital before
joining the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and serving as a Second and then
First Lieutenant until 1946.
On February 22, 1947, she married Colonel James Alexander
Boyd in Wellesley, MA — after a romance which began as a
nurse-patient relationship — and gained two stepsons:
Richard and James. Jim retired from the U.S. Army Air Corps and became
a high school history teacher. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack
in 1957. Elsie Ruth and Jim had two children: Daniel and Elizabeth
(Betty).
On August 14, 1958, Elsie Ruth married Stanley Bernard
Cassidy (O.C.) — whom she had met years previously during
her time at Mount Allison — and gained an additional three
stepsons: Bruce, Peter, and Brian. Elsie Ruth and Stan lived in
Fredericton where Stan owned an electrical contracting business until
his sudden death from a work-related accident in 1993. Elsie Ruth was
an active partner to Stan in his long-term charitable work
provincially and nationally with the Shriners and in his establishment
and development of a rehabilitation centre in
Fredericton.
Elsie Ruth is survived by her children Daniel Boyd, Elizabeth
Slifer, Bruce Cassidy, Peter Cassidy, Brian Cassidy, and by numerous
grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
No one has ever been able to bake a better ginger
snap.
A summertime memorial service will be organized and details
will be announced in a future edition of the Daily Gleaner. Interment
of ashes will be in the family cemetery at Cassidy Lake. Memorial
donations will be welcomed by the Stan Cassidy Centre for
Rehabilitation, 800 Priestman St., Fredericton, NB, E3B 0C7.
www.mcadamsfh.com
Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Elsie Ruth Cassidy RN 19162019..
Death notice for the town of: Fredericton, Province: Nouveau-Brunswick