Ruth Morris Graham; Children’s Writer, Teacher, Missionary

Ruth Morris Graham, 95, teacher and missionary who wrote children’s books. Born to to a Baptist minister and missionary in Charleston, S.C., she studied education at Nyack Missionary College in New York. She taught in Virginia at Boydton Institute and Virginia Seminary before going to Liberia in West Africa in 1927. There she met her husband, children’s author and world traveler Lorenz Bell Graham, who died in 1989. The couple shared a life of social service, church leadership, international travel and children’s literature. Her books included “The Happy Sound,” about family life in Haiti; “Big Sister,” about an African girl; “Penny Savings Bank,” a biography of Maggie L. Walker, and “The Saga of the Morris Family,” about her own family’s history of social work. On Saturday in Claremont.