Sherry Ruth
Treasurer, NFB of Ohio

    Sherry Ruth is a lifelong resident of the city of Elyria, graduating from Elyria High School in 1973.  During two years of accounting courses, she discovered a love of numbers and the many ways they are used to bring order to our lives.  After graduating, she worked for a savings and loan, the city of Elyria, and finally an accountant until June of 1989 when she began showing signs of diabetic retinopathy, which led to total loss of vision in January of 1990.

    By the summer of 1990, not only had Sherry lost her job and her vision, she was in kidney failure. At this low point she made a life-changing phone call to the National Federation of the Blind for help in coping with her daily life and her two children.  She and her husband were immediately invited to the NFB of Lorain County annual picnic, where she was introduced to a world in which blind people expect to live a satisfying life of joy and independence. Sherry joined the chapter and became its treasurer in 1992. In 1996 she was elected treasurer of the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio, an office to which she has been reelected every two years since. Sherry is currently president of the Lorain County chapter.  Along with her work in the Federation, she is a Bible study leader and president of a women’s group in her church.

    Sherry has been married to her husband Tom for 30 years, and they have two sons and seven grandchildren.  Sherry enjoys reading, watching NASCAR, playing games, and going on cruises with her husband.

    She says, “As surely as a kidney-pancreas transplant saved my life in 1992, the National Federation of the Blind saved my identity and sense of myself as a person with value and desire to continue to give, using the skills God gave me.”