Takoma Park activist was vigorous champion of civic, political causes

Ruth Abbott, 89, an activist who helped lead protests, voter registration drives and preservation efforts in Takoma Park, where her husband served three terms as the city's feisty mayor, died Oct. 14 of congestive heart failure at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. She lived in a house in Takoma Park built by her father.

Mrs. Abbott met her husband, Sammie A. Abbott, in a Buffalo jail in 1938. He had been arrested for helping organize a steel mill strike. She was a teenager taking soup to her father, a bricklayer and union activist who had also been arrested. The couple eloped in 1939 and moved to Washington a year later.

Her husband worked as an artist and union organizer and was a longtime political gadfly. Mrs. Abbott worked as a bookkeeper and secretary for an electrical business and lighting company in Bethesda from 1964 to 1984.

After settling in Takoma Park in the late 1950s, the Abbotts were at the center of a group of activists interested in civil rights and preserving a sense of community. Her husband, described in press accounts as "strident, confrontational, acerbic, cantankerous, even abusive," was a colorful figure who estimated that he had been arrested 50 times. As mayor from 1980 to 1985, he helped solidify Takoma Park's reputation as a haven of liberal ideals. He led efforts to declare the city of 17,000 a nuclear-free zone and to offer sanctuary to refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. During his tenure as mayor, the city became known as "The People's Republic of Takoma Park."

"I'm a perpetually mad person," Sam Abbott told The Washington Post. "I hate injustice. . . . I'm too mad to sleep."

Mrs. Abbott, who was seen as more outgoing and accommodating than her husband, helped fight many of his political battles. She was known as the first lady of Takoma Park and was often seen in the audience at city meetings, knitting.

Among her many civic activities, she helped lead historic-preservation efforts that saved several blocks of Takoma Park's stately Victorian houses that were about to be bulldozed to make way for high-rises. She was also at the forefront of protests that led to the desegregation of Takoma Park's elementary school.

With her husband, Mrs. Abbott was a principal organizer of protests against the proposed North Central Freeway, a federal project that would have built a 10-lane superhighway through Takoma Park and Northeast Washington, destroying entire neighborhoods. The battle went on for more than a decade before the project was abandoned, largely because of grass-roots opposition, in the 1970s.

Mrs. Abbott was a member of Women Strike for Peace, a movement formed in the early 1960s to protest nuclear proliferation. She participated in civil rights marches on the Mall and demonstrated against the Vietnam War outside the White House.

In 1977, she helped plan the first Takoma Park Folk Festival, which has been a fixture of the community for 32 years. She sold T-shirts and registered voters at the festival and often went door-to-door to welcome newcomers to the city.

Ruth Grace Yalsic was born March 19, 1920, in Hamburg, N.Y. After she and her husband moved to Washington in 1940, her father followed and built several houses in Takoma Park, one of which became the Abbott family home.

Mrs. Abbott was a talented cook and seamstress, and the family home was a gathering place for community activists. She was also an enthusiastic fan of rock-and-roll and had a poster of Bruce Springsteen in her bedroom.

Her husband lost his fourth race for mayor in 1985 by seven votes. He died at 82 in 1990.

Survivors include three children, Nancy Abbott Young of Takoma Park, Susan Abbott of Marshfield, Vt., and Dr. Abraham Abbott of Woodbridge, Calif.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.