Ruth Louise Little

Ruth Louise Driedger Little, 81, of Rockford, passed away on October 15, 2026, at Wesley Willows. She was born February 4, 1945, in Cleveland, Ohio; the daughter of Edwin and Elinor (Kester) Driedger. Ruth married Thomas Little in 1967.

Ruth attended Rockford College and graduated with her bachelor’s degree from Purdue University. She was very active in the Rockford community. She is a past president of Tinker Swiss Cottage and Booker Washington Center. She was active in the Natural Land Institute, Wesley Willows Rotary, Rockford Downtown Rotary, and Wesley Willows Prairie People. She won 2017 Crusader Clinic Spirit of Caring Award, The Atwood Award (Seth B. Atwood Memorial Park and Conservation award), and the Rockford College Karl C. Williams Award of Distinction in 1998.

Ruth will be remembered for her enthusiastic approach to life, bright disposition, and cheerful laugh. She was extremely intelligent. Ruth was a Girl Scout all her life, from Brownie to Senior Scout. She then became a Girl Scout camp counselor in the summers. Her cam nickname was Spider because when the some of the young campers found a large spider in their tent, she not only wasn’t frightened of it, she picked it up, talked about spiders to the kids, and carried it away, depositing it in the woods.

In 1970, after moving to Blue Island, IL, she worked as a field representative for the South Cook County Girl Scouts. In 1973, she became Assistant Director of the Rock River Valley Council of Girl Scouts in Rockford. After 4 years in Rockford, she became the Executive Director of the Green Hills Girl Scout Council in Freeport. She returned to Rockford several years later as the Executive Director where she served for 30 years before retiring in 2009. In 1989 Ruth took four senior scouts from around the country on a tour and work project in India. In 1997 and 1999, she and her husband, Tom, chaperoned junior high aged students from the Rockford Unitarian Universalist Church to Boston for a week-long tour.

Ruth, with the help of her friend Holly Hanson, created Elders’ Eden, a group home for their aging mothers and two other senior women. Round-the-clock staff took care of the women and occasional day trips at half the cost of traditional full assisted living.

She survived breast cancer and a mastectomy in 2012, a brain aneurism and several strokes during an emergency operation in Madison in late 2012 and early 2013. She then broke her hip and had hip replacement in late 2023.

She was very talented in many ways. She played the clarinet in the high school band, was an excellent pianist, and other instruments including the concertina, mandolin, penny whistle, autoharp, and guitar. She was an excellent seamstress, making shirts and sweaters for her husband and friends, as well as making items for around the house. She created marvelous large “dolls” –cats, dogs, and acrobat in a swing, all for gifts and church auctions. She was also an avid potter in college, creating bowls, plates, and sculptures.

Ruth loved nature; especially frogs and toads, conducting an annual frog count by driving around various wet spots in Winnebago county is late spring. She banded migratory birds at Sand Bluff Bird Observatory for more than 20 years. She participated in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count, tagged migrating monarch butterflies for the University of Kansas with a 4 % return. She was also interested in snakes and held no fear of them or spiders. She stayed prominent in the county prairie restoration and preservation, first through Natural Land Institute and later through Welsey Willows.

Ruth maintained close ties with three high school friends and greatly enjoyed annual, week-long get-togethers with them on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. She was also close to her Toronto cousins on both sides of her family. She took delight in the fact that it was only in Canada would people know how to pronounce her Mennonite maiden name.

A friend likes to tell the story of walking with her in a marsh where she was tipping over logs and boards looking for snakes. She found a northern-banded water snake, and she yelled for him to grab it as she readied her nets. He was frightened silly of all snakes but obeyed her commands. I (Tom) was with her in a Michigan forest, bumping along a rough, sandy road when we saw a snake ahead of us. We hopped out of the car and when I noticed that the snake had a hood like a cobra, I immediately assumed it was an escaped specimen from a zoo or private collector and started screaming at her to get away. Contrarian that she was, she had her nose down close to it to confirm it was indeed a hog-nosed snake, a standard resident of wild sandy areas. It first confirmed my determination by raising its head and spreading its hood. I decided I was about to be an early widower. When the bluff didn’t work, the hognose exercised Plan B, rolled over and played dead, looking like it had been there for a week. I (Tom) had a similar experience when we were walking on a creek bed in southern Indiana and came across a wolf spider that was as big as any tarantula I’ve ever seen. I was convinced we’d found a colony of North American tarantulas or other terrible spiders but Ruth, of course, was down on her hands and knees to look more closely, telling me to “Quick, take a picture of this beautiful thing.” It was an interesting first few years of marriage to a Girl Scout.

Survivors include her husband, Tom Little; brother Paul Driedger of Worcester, MA; numerous cousins in Toronto, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and North Carolina. She is predeceased by her parents Edwin and Elinor (Kester) Driedger.

A Memorial Services will be held at 1 pm, Saturday, November 21, 2026, at Rockford Unitarian Universalist Church, 4848 Turner St., Rockford, 61107. Stateline Cremations is assisting the family, 6204 Forest Hills Rd., Loves Park, IL 61111. www.statelinecremations.com