POTSDAM – Former Potsdam Mayor Ruth Garner died at her home in Potsdam Wednesday. She was 101 years old.

Arrangements are with the Garner Funeral Home, which she and her husband established and ran for many years.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Mary’s Church, 20 Lawrence Ave., Monday, Oct. 23 at 10:30 a.m., with Father Stephen Rocker presiding. Burial will be at St. Mary’s Cemetery. Condolences may be shared at garnerfh.com.

A Potsdam businesswoman and a village trustee, deputy mayor and mayor, Garner was still serving as a village trustee at the time of her death.

In 1973, Garner was the first woman to be elected to the Village of Potsdam Board of Trustees, in an era when many women in the U.S. were expressing themselves politically for the first time.

Six years later Garner was elected mayor for her first term, was re-elected then, and after a layoff of several years, was returned to the office.

In 2003, Garner was part of a CBS "60 Minutes" story about senior citizens who keep working well past the retirement age.

She and her husband George raised six children.

Never one to shrink from a challenge, she raised hundreds of dollars for the Potsdam Humane Society when, at age 93 in 2009, she got her very first tattoo, a small shamrock, using it as a fundraising ploy.

A former partner in Garner Funeral Home in Potsdam, she also served on the boards of the Potsdam Public Library, Renewal House, and the St. Lawrence County Historical Society.

Ailing somewhat in recent years and not able to regularly attend meetings of the village board, Garner nonetheless remained informed and spoke regularly with other village officials.

She was serving as a trustee and deputy mayor until the time of her death.

Current Mayor Ron Tischler said that at the request of the family her casket will be carried from St. Mary’s to the cemetery on the back of a Potsdam Fire Department truck.

Garner first became active politically during the debate over a proposed bond issue for Potsdam Schools in 1956, before the construction of the elementary and middle schools. Potsdam High School was there, Garner said, but younger children often went to the Congdon Campus School, which was a “practice” school for teachers from Potsdam Normal School, now SUNY Potsdam.

“It was women who got behind it,” she said in an interview in 2005 as she turned 90 years old. “I felt there was strength in local schools. I remember talking to people and encouraging them to vote for the bond issue. It was a big step, because it was going to increase their school taxes, and there would be busing. But I felt it would be of benefit because it would mean an expansion of programs -- athletics, music -- not that there weren’t those things at Congdon, because those kids got a really good education, but I felt broadening it would be good.”

She also served as president of the PTA. “I think parents want the best for their children, and that parents have to be involved in their children’s education. And people have to work together with schools to get the kind of education they want for their children. I had six children by that time.”

Familiar With Controversy

While Garner had no particular example in mind during out 2005 interview, the outspoken mayor admitsted to a few public moments she wishes could take back.

“Very often, you know, I think everybody’s subject to this. You’ll say something and you’ll think, ‘Oh, no, if I could only take it back.’ I’ve had a few moments like that.” But she was making no apology.

“I don’t know if it’s a weakness or not; I’ve always thought of it as a strength: I’ve always been a person that never lets anybody not know where I stood. At times I think it probably would have been better to have kept my opinion to myself,” she said, and she chuckled. “It shocks people sometimes. I think often you make a remark that could be misinterpreted, which is difficult, because words are very hard to take back. You may feel so passionate about something that you just can’t stand it because people don’t know how you feel. I think you have to be judicious, and sometimes it’s very hard.

“When something is controversial, people tend to want everybody to agree with them, but people don’t. I’ve always found it to be a learning moment if you can keep an open mind and listen to others, because very often it does change your thinking, or at least shades it enough that it turns you in another direction, to be able to think, ‘Well, I never thought of it in that way.’”

Daughter of a Telegrapher and a Switchboard Operator

Garner was born Ruth Finnegan in Massena on Nov. 18, 1915. Not long after, her family moved to Montreal, where her father, Dennis Finnegan, was employed as a telegrapher and railroad station agent at Windsor Station. Her mother, Isabelle Dame Finnegan, had been a switchboard operator for a private telephone company in Potsdam. The switchboard was up over what is now the University Bookstore on Market Street.

In 1919 they moved to Norwood where her father was a telegrapher at the Norwood depot, “which was a big junction for the railroad. Five different railroads came into that junction. It was a very, very busy place.

Garner graduated from Norwood High School on Prospect Street in 1933. She was valedictorian of her class. She went to nursing school at Champlain Valley Hospital in Plattsburgh. “I finished my course work but never took the boards. I came home because my mother had fallen and broken her hip and had complications.

“So I came back and was a manicurist and hairdresser, and eventually had a shop of my own for many years on Prospect Street in Norwood.”

Mother of Six

Soon she and George Garner decided to marry. “George and I went to school together. I met him when I was in the sixth grade. We married in 1939 in Potsdam. We had six children. We established the Garner Funeral Home in 1945, at 10 Lawrence Ave., while I still had the shop in Norwood. Then I worked in the funeral home as office manager, plus many other duties that you might find yourself doing in a 23-room house with a big family.”

She said her father held views that were conventional then but would not go over too well now. “He would say, ‘You don’t have to learn how to drive because your husband will drive you.’ Well, as it turns out, my husband didn’t want to drive. But it seems so silly now, that you would buy into things like that.

Interest in Planning and Zoning

“One of my main interests was in planning and zoning. For instance, in my lifetime I’ve seen beautiful homes, for instance like Benjamin Raymond’s house -- he was practically the founder of Potsdam -- torn down and a gas station put up. Afterwards, I got to thinking, ‘My gosh, why did they do that?’ I think people weren’t aware of the historic effect of many of the fine old places. I think of the grist mill on the corner near the river that has such historical importance to this community. People just didn’t think about it. Other places have. They provide a stability to your community, and once they’re gone they’re gone.”

The impact of traffic downtown was also an interest. “I was always interested in getting the bypass built. It had been developed by the planning board shortly after World War II, but nobody could get it through because there was such concern from the economic interests, stores and things, which was legitimate, about traffic going by their places of business. In trying to balance the two, you never could get everybody together.”

And then there was urban renewal in the 1970s. “People might not remember that downtown was decimated. We thought urban renewal would mean progress. But we found that many times progress doesn’t always lead to good results.

“Businesses that had been next to each other for years were dispersed, and it was when the first local mall was being built. All of these things have some effects on business that aren’t always visible at the time. You can’t always predict what is going to happen. That was one of the things I was very interested in when I went on the village board. I had been on the urban renewal board and some people at that time didn’t believe in public meetings. It was a great controversy.”

Lost by Two Votes

Those things inspired Garner to run for village trustee, and she won a seat. “Well I was on the village board and after the first year you think you know everything, so I ran for mayor that next year and was defeated by two votes.”

Then in 1977, when John Hayes decided not to run for mayor again, Garner ran, this time “on the promise that we would try to finalize urban renewal and get the bypass. It was a wonderful board and we were able to get those things done.”

Garner said she felt people becoming politically energized in Potsdam.

“It was just the beginning of many people becoming interested in having a say in what was happening in their community. I think a lot of good came out of it.”

“I have great trust in citizens’ ideas,” she said. “You can’t think of everything yourself. You have to depend on others. They may not all be great ideas, but they’re usually something you can build on.”

She left the mayor’s seat in 1981, but ran again in 1993 for the first of four consecutive village trustee terms.