For UHJ Member Dr. David Ruhe was a Baha'i of Jewish Background

Dr. David S. Ruhe

 

Dr. David S. Ruhe was a medical educator and movie director, Bahai leader, servant of humanity, human rights activist and a watercolor painter. He was a visionary who made award-winning medical films and proposed a range of innovations in medical education, including Lifetime Learning for the Doctor calling for career-long education for doctors in the 1950s with his colleague, Dr. Bernard Dryer. Dr. Ruhe, a medical educator, was named the first professor of Medical Communications at the University of Kansas Medical School in 1954. Also in the 1950s, Dr. Ruhe pioneered the use of optical fibers for endoscopic cinematography, projected high-definition images in surgical theatres and videotaped psychiatric sessions for peer review. He made more than a hundred medical films and won the Golden Reel and the Venice Film Festival awards for Dynamics of the Tubercle and The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain award for Emergency Airway. Dr. Ruhe also served as the producer of All My Babies, a midwife training documentary directed by George Stoney. After graduating from Temple Medical School, he began his career in medicine during World War II as a malaria researcher in the Public Health Service and was eventually appointed Director of the Medical Film Institute for the Association of American Medical Colleges. Dr. Ruhe was a member of the Bahai Faith. Bahai communities have no clergy but are governed by elected spiritual assemblies. In 1963, he was elected Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States, the highest administrative position. In 1968, he was elected by representatives of the global Bahai community to serve as one of the nine members of the Universal House of Justice of the Bahai Faith seated in Haifa, Israel, where he served five terms for a total of 25 years. Dr. Ruhe said that his best accomplishment was the effort he made over many years to assist, encourage and support Bahai individuals and communities around the world who are engaged in direct service to humanity through educational, medical and other direct service activities. He wrote and published two historical books about Bahaullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, Door of Hope and Robe of Light. Since his 1993 retirement from the Universal House of Justice, he produced a series of documentary TV programs about the Bahai faith. He was an activist in the human rights movement in the 1940s in Atlanta, Ga., where he was a member of a small group that successfully pressed for the hiring of African-American police officers, and in the 1960s in Kansas City where, consistent with his beliefs as a Bahai he peacefully protested against the segregation of African-Americans. He also was an accomplished watercolor painter of scenes in nature, who was trained by Walter Baum in the Lehigh Valley school of Impressionism. He was productive over his whole life and in his final years painted local scenes near his home in upstate New York. He was a creative and enthusiastic family patriarch who loved organizing songfests, hikes and outdoor adventures. Dr. Ruhe, who died on Tuesday, September 6, 2005, was born in Allentown on Jan. 3, 1914, to Percy Bott Ruhe, editor of The Morning Call newspaper, and Amy (Sieger) Ruhe. Survivors: Wife, Margaret Kunz Ruhe, to whom he was married for 65 years; sons, Christopher Ruhe and Douglas Ruhe; seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren; sister, Judith Diehl; brother, Benjamin Ruhe. Services: A memorial service for family and friends will be celebrated in Meadowbrook Lodge, Route 94, New Windsor, N.Y., on Friday, September 9, beginning at 2 p.m. Interment will follow in Cedar Hill Cemetary, Route 9W, Newburgh, N.Y. Funeral arrangements are being directed by Engel Funeral Home Inc., Route 9W, Newburgh. To send a note of condolence, visit us at www.engelfuneralhome.com. 

 

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