Sara B. Ruona

After a long battle with multiple myeloma, Sara B. Ruona of Penhook, VA passed away at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Saturday, November 4, 2017. Mrs. Ruona was born on November 25, 1941 in Van Wert, Ohio. She was preceded in death by her parents, Alba and Flossie Hunt Burgess; her sisters, Dorothy McCalla, and Marguerite Jettinghoff. She is survived by her loving husband and caregiver, Lloyd of the home; her sister, Marilyn Weaver of Sun City, AZ; brother-in-law, Marion Jettinghoff of Delphos, Ohio; sisters-in-law, bothers-in-law; several nieces and nephews; their children and grandchildren. Sara was a lifelong learner. She received three different college degrees. She worked as a librarian in both the public and university settings. Her career as a librarian was both interesting and varied from finding travel information about New Zealand for a member of the Statler Brothers singing group at a public library, to working on a four year Retrospective Cataloging Conversion Project to computerize the Z. Smith Reynolds Library of Wake Forest University, to becoming the drug reference librarian for the clinical pharmacist at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital. At the age of 48 years old, she decided to enter Nursing School at Forsyth Tech in Winston-Salem, NC. Two years later she obtained her ADN and began working as a registered nurse at Wake Forest Baptist and High Point Regional Hospitals. After two years of nursing experience she decided to obtain her BSN at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was a member of Sigma Theta Tau international honor society of nursing at UNCG. She and her husband retired to Smith Mountain Lake where they replaced their “Fisherman Cottage” with a permanent home and lived happily for 15 years. She was a passionate reader and she taught herself to speed read. Her monthly trips to the public library usually resulted in 10 to 12 books on a variety of subjects to be read and she read them all. She was an information junkie with an insatiable curiosity and she loved the computer. She would write things down that she wanted to look up and would spend 2 to 4 hours on the computer finding the information. When she was a nurse, she would come home and look up the diagnosis of her patients to learn about their conditions and how she could serve them better. She was a dedicated, hard worker. A memorial service will be held at 1:00 PM, December 9, 2017 at Trinity Ecumenical Parish in Moneta, VA. Her ashes will be placed in the Columbarium after the service. A reception will follow after the service. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Lake Christian Ministries, P. O. Box 695, Moneta, VA 24121. LCM requests that you put Sara’s name on the memo line so they can acknowledge the contribution. Her husband would like to extend a special thank you to the nursing staff of 8-Mountain, CCU and 9-South MSICU at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and to Mathew Skelton, MD, and Jolee Preston, NP. Arrangements by Conner-Bowman Funeral Home, 62 VA Market Place Drive, Rocky Mount, VA 24151 540-334-5151