intellectual trajectory

Ruth Evelyn Champlin Van Zant
1906 - 2007

Ruth Evelyn Champlin Van Zant, 101, passed away Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007.

Graveside service: A private service will be held in Oklahoma, where she
will be laid to rest beside her husband.
Memorials: Contributions may be made to University Christian Church, 2720 S.
University Drive, Fort Worth, Texas 76109.
___________

When our grandmother was almost 70, she taught her grandchildren how to
stand on their heads. She said that, as with many things in life, it was all
about balance. She was right.

Ruth Evelyn Champlin Van Zant was born in Indian Territory in 1906, in what
was to become the state of Oklahoma. The daughter of Louise Selover Champlin
and Frederick Charles Champlin, her family were early settlers of Oklahoma.

Her father and his two brothers came to Oklahoma for the opportunities the
oil business offered and ultimately came to operate many business
enterprises in Enid, Okla.

Her childhood memories included flying down the
stairs of their home on carpet strips with her four other siblings. Because
of this story, her great-grandchildren engaged in the same activity, no
matter how loud or destructive, in their sleeping bags.

She viewed a college education as an opportunity to see the world and in her
four years, shematriculated at three different universities in various geographic
parts ofthe country.

 She attended Maryland College for Women and spent two
 years there, while her brother was concurrently enrolled at the nearby Naval
Academy in Bethesda. The stories of riding the train from Oklahoma to
Maryland, with all the windows of the train open due to a lack of any type
of ventilation system during that era and arriving with one's white gloves
and hat pristine, is a testament to her persistence.

 Following the
graduation of her brother, she transferred to Colorado University in
Boulder, where she pledged the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, an institution
that was meaningful to her all of her life and one which subsequent
generations followed.

She then ultimately graduated from Oklahoma University
with honors where she majored in English Literature. Her interest in higher
education did not end there. After the birth of her first grandchild, she
went to graduate school and obtained a master's degree, also with honors, in
Spanish studies from Texas Christian University. Although still a little
unclear to the family, she also managed to pick up the French language along
this intellectual trajectory.

She enjoyed travel and her enthusiasm for this began at an early age, with
long trips in the eight-passenger Cadillac across the country to see the
Grand Canyon, Yosemite and other great national sites. Following graduation
from college, her family's intent had been for her to return to Enid and
teach elementary school.

 She, however, had other plans.

 She took her savings
and, with the suitable chaperone for the late 1920s, went to Europe. There
she was exposed to the works of Monet, Matisse and Picasso, critical
influences in her own artistic career. She traveled across the Soviet Union
when the Trans-Siberian Railway first opened for tourism (a feat of courage
in and of itself), rode camels in Egypt and paddled in the flat bottom boats
of the klongs in Bangkok.

At the age of 100, she could remember the
"shortcut" to the Prado Museum through the back streets of Madrid. When she
could no longer travel, she would travel vicariously with those of us who
could. So when you arrived at your hotel in Hong Kong there would be a
letter waiting for you from her regaling you with the Hong Kong of four
decades ago.

She married James Harvey Van Zant and moved to Fort Worth in 1943, where
they built together a successful oil and gas business and raised their
family.

She loved to swim and she swam almost daily until the age of 100. Before her
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren could crawl, if she had her
way, they would be in the water with her.

 She instilled in them all a
lifelong understanding of the importance of daily physical and intellectual
activity. In later years she loved to swim every evening with her neighbor
and discuss the content of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

She taught us how to listen to the trees, how to waltz, how to make a great
meatloaf. She had an appreciation for hard work and the penny. Because of
her, we wash and reuse foil and save rubber bands and this was all before
recycling was fashionable.

Her influence is exemplified in her
great-grandson, captain of his middle school water polo team. She had been
the one that taught him how to put his face in the water at the age of two.
Her laughter lives in her great-grandchildren.

Her spirit is present every
time a child learns to swim.

Survivors: Children, Jeanne Van Zant Sanders (Mrs. Frederick Arthur Sanders)
of Fort Worth and James Harvey Van Zant II and his wife, Carolan, of Dublin;
six grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.
Published in the Star-Telegram on 9/28/2007.