Ruth S. Batts, leader in Home and School

Ruth Silas Batts, 90, a board member of the Philadelphia Home and School Council in the 1960s, died on Sunday, April 25, at a daughter's home in New York City.

Born in New York, Mrs. Batts graduated from Evander Childs High School in the Bronx and studied from 1940 to 1943 at the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia.

A daughter, Diane Batts Morrow, said that after raising a family with her husband, Dr. James A. Batts Jr., Mrs. Batts in the late 1950s was a founder and the first president of the Cobbs Creek Civic Association.

In 1960, she was a founding member of the group known as the Menettes at the Christian Street YMCA in South Philadelphia, and from 1960 to 1962 was its president.

Her daughter said that from 1964 to 1966, Mrs. Batts was president of the Home and School Association at Lingelbach School in West Mount Airy.

Mrs. Batts was an executive board member of the Philadelphia Home and School Council and from 1968 to 1970 served as its treasurer.

A member of the board of governors for the Philadelphia High School for Girls, she was a member of the Pupil Progress Report Committee for the Board of Education

Her daughter said that Mrs. Batts was a vice president from 1964 to 1966 of the Philadelphia chapter of Jack and Jill of America, which provided leadership skills to children, and served on a board of the Selective Service System.

From 1988 to 1990, Mrs. Batts was president of the Philadelphia auxiliary of Frontiers International, and in 1990 she was board vice president of the Lincoln Day Nursery in South Philadelphia.

Her husband died in 1992.

Besides her daughter, Mrs. Batts is survived by daughters Deborah, Denise, and Mercedes Ellington, granddaughter of the musician Duke Ellington, and four grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass was set for noon Thursday, May 13, at the Church of St. Madeleine Sophie, Greene and Upsal Streets, with burial in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd.