Ruth Susan Coleman

Ruth Coleman

Coleman quietly donated millions

In between beloved card games, she aided local causes

By Jesse Garza of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Aug. 3, 2007

Of the thousands of people who have benefited from Ruth Coleman's quiet generosity, most probably wouldn't recognize her name.

Not most of the skilled nurses coming out of Cardinal Stritch University, nor the patients who benefit from care at the Milwaukee Heart Research Foundation.

Nor the children who attend Yeshiva Elementary School or the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee, nor devotees of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

"Her belief was that true charity doesn't have to make a big splash," Coleman's daughter, Roberta Caraway, said Thursday.

Funeral services will be held today for Coleman, who died Thursday of lung cancer at 84.

Through the years, without ever seeking the spotlight, Coleman quietly donated millions of dollars to dozens of local causes, much of it through the David and Ruth Coleman Charitable Foundation.

She did, however, wallow in the intensity of a good poker game or in the attention she received from her grandchildren.

"She taught all her grandchildren how to play craps," Caraway said.

"She had quite a spirit."

She was born Ruth Susan Soref, on May 22, 1923, in Milwaukee to mother Bertha Soref and father Harry Soref, a co-founder of Master Lock, Caraway said.

She grew up in the Sherman Park area and graduated from Washington High School.

She attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for a couple years before eloping with Irving Sklar, a singer and musician who was director of the UW marching band, Caraway said.

The couple lived in Madison before moving to Milwaukee in the 1950s.

She began to fancy games of chance after her father introduced her to Las Vegas.

She later married Milwaukee investment broker David Coleman and eventually joined a poker club made up of high-powered executives.

"These were heads of big corporations and she was the only woman, but she played right along with them," her daughter said.

"She loved to gamble," Caraway said. "She went to Potawatomi (Bingo Casino) just two weeks ago."

After a bout with breast cancer in the mid 1980s, Coleman wanted to help other women avoid the medical trauma she had endured. So, in 1987, she and her sister helped launch what was then the Mount Sinai Medical Center's Ruth Coleman-Ida Soref Breast Cancer Diagnostic Center in Bayside.

'Very generous'

After David Coleman died in 1993, his wife created the foundation that was seldom, if ever, mentioned in the news media. Its list of beneficiaries includes Congregation Beth Jehuda and Jewish Home and Care Center Foundation - Sarah Chudnow Campus, the Milwaukee Public Library Foundation, the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Task Force on Family Violence.

But individuals also benefited from Coleman's kindness, including a nurse she helped get through college and the people she helped with medical bills.

"She was just very generous to everybody," her daughter said. "And she did a lot of things very quietly."

In addition to her daughter, Coleman is also survived by a son, Mark Sklar and step-son Sam Coleman.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m., today at Goodman-Benson Whitefish Bay Funeral Home, followed by interment at Spring Hill Cemetery.