Point Place elementary instructor played piano

7/15/2002

Ruth Jane Rahilly, a longtime Washington Local Schools elementary teacher, died Friday in Lutheran Village at Wolf Creek nursing home in Springfield Township. She was 84 and suffered pneumonia.

For 25 years, Miss Rahilly taught first grade at Point Place's Shoreland Elementary, where her sister, Florence Johnson, also taught. Another sister, Bonnie Chilcote, was a student there during her sisters' teaching tenures.

“She was an excellent teacher,” Mrs. Chilcote said of her sister Ruth. “I'm not saying that just because I'm her sister. I ended up teaching school, too, and realized that she was way ahead of her time. She taught phonics before the whole phonics boom came.”

Before joining the staff at Shoreland, Miss Rahilly taught for a few years at Martin School in the former Adams Township.

Miss Rahilly was a skilled pianist with a fine singing voice. For many years, she was the soprano soloist at Point Place United Church of Christ, her sister, Bonnie, said.

Miss Rahilly retired in 1974 but kept busy by visiting friends and participating in crafts groups, her sister said. After moving to Oregon from Point Place, she broke both hips in falls and entered an assisted living community there. She moved to Lutheran Village at Wolf Creek four years ago.

A graduate of the former Point Place High School, Miss Rahilly earned a bachelor's of education degree from the University of Toledo, where she was a member of Alpha Omicron Pi sorority.

Surviving are her sisters, Bonnie Chilcote and Florence Johnson, and nieces and nephews.

Services will be at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow in Point Place United Church of Christ.

The body will be in the David R. Jasin Funeral Home after 4 p.m. today.

The family requests tributes to Hospice of Northwest Ohio or Lutheran Village at Wolf Creek.