Ruth Patricia Bastille
January 31, 1918 — May 18, 2025
Ruth Patricia (Miller) Bastille, 107, died on May 18, 2025, in Newton, Massachusetts, after a brief illness.
Ruth was born on January 31, 1918, to Eleanor (Malley) and Harry Miller in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. The years following the crash of 1929 were difficult, with extended family all living under one roof, out-of-work people begging at the door, and seldom enough of anything to go around.
Ruth began her education at Saint Joseph’s parochial school. After graduating from Sharpsburg High, Ruth found clerical work with a photo studio, at the local V. A. Hospital, and at Haughton Elevator in Pittsburgh; well into her nineties, she would routinely write notes to herself in shorthand. In 1943, she met a young GI from New Hampshire, Bob Bastille, entirely by chance on a crowded Pittsburgh sidewalk. They married in 1945, when Bob returned after V-E Day, and moved to Beacon Hill in Boston, then to Waltham. She gave birth to three sons, Robert, Jr. (Bobby) (1947), David (1950), and Edward (Ned) (1953).
In 1950, the family moved to Wellesley, Mass., and the house on Mayo Road, which would be Ruth and Bob’s home for the next 61 years. Bob started his own architectural practice, and as soon as all the boys were in school, Ruth sought employment again outside the home. She was proudest of her years of work at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, first in the school of nursing, then as an assistant to one or more of the doctors, even accompanying them on rounds and into the OR to take notes.
Throughout the decades in Wellesley, she kept house, doing most of the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and staying on top of the busy family schedule. Sociable and unpretentious, she made friends easily. In everything, her attention to detail was remarkable. An “exceptional” seamstress according to her niece Marilyn, she often made her own clothing from patterns, using a vintage sewing machine and doing fine needlework by hand.
Ruth was particularly devoted to her local parish church, Saint James the Great, from 1950 to its closing in 2004. It was, in some respects, the center of her life in Wellesley. As a member of the Altar Society, she helped to keep the altar cloths and priests’ vestments clean and pressed. Later, for many years, she helped to arrange the floral displays for Sunday masses. She also served as a eucharistic minister and sang in the choir. In 2005, she joined Saint Paul Parish, also in Wellesley.
Ruth enjoyed vacations with family on Nantucket and in coastal Maine. She and Bob liked to take rambling trips on scenic highways and back roads throughout New England; they also vacationed together at Sanibel Island in Florida, traveled to New York and Pennsylvania, to Canada and France, to England and Venezuela, to visit Bobby, and to Los Angeles to visit Ned.
Ruth and Bob moved to assisted living in Weston in 2011. Bob died in 2013, and Ruth continued on, known and liked by the staff and her fellow residents, attending Sunday mass at Saint Paul’s every week, enjoying car trips to scenic spots, and visits with friends and with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. As late as 2024, she enjoyed reading the daily Boston Globe, the weekly New Yorker, and The Pilot. She donated funds to her local church, the Boston Archdiocese, and a variety of environmental organizations.
In 2004, at age 86, she was moved to write, “It has been a happy, fulfilling life with my loving husband and children, who kept life interesting, and later with their spouses, who felt like family to me. Our grandchildren couldn’t have been more loving and caring. I love them all.”
She is survived by her sons Robert Bastille, Jr. and his partner Jane Runge, and David Bastille and his wife Annie Hale; by her grandchildren Sarah Bastille and husband Matt Haberman, Katherine DeFrank, James Bastille, Anne Bastille and husband Jack Williams, and Peter Bastille; and by her great-grandchildren Chloe DeFrank, Benjamin DeFrank, Albert (Bertie) Williams, and George Williams. Ruth was predeceased by her siblings Thomas, Mary, George, Grace, Mercedes, Jeanne, Charles, Harry, and Robert; by Bob, her husband of 68 years; and by her son Ned. The family thanks everyone who enriched her life, especially in her later years.
Donations in her name may be made to Catholic Charities Boston, 275 West Broadway, Boston, MA 02127, and to Saint Paul Parish, 502 Washington Street, Wellesley, MA 02482. A Mass of Remembrance will be celebrated for Ruth at Saint Paul’s on Monday July 7th, 2025, at 11:00am.
To share a memory, or to leave the family a message of condolence, please visit Ruth’s tribute page at www.jellisonfuneralhome.com
If you’d like us to run a complete obituary of your loved one on Swellesley, please send to theswellesleyreport@gmail.com
