1. Dame Lucy Ruth Kirk was a New Zealand prominent anti-abortion campaigner.
11 Facts About Ruth Kirk
1. 2.
Ruth Kirk's husband was New Zealand's 29th Prime Minister, Norman Kirk.
3.
Lucy Ruth Miller was born in Taumarunui in 1922, the daughter of postmaster George Miller and his wife Margaret.
4.
Ruth Kirk met her future husband, Norman Kirk, at a blind date in Paeroa; she was his first partner.
5.
The couple were to have three boys and two girls, including John Ruth Kirk, who succeeded his father as MP for Sydenham, and coastal geomorphologist Professor Bob Ruth Kirk.
6.
Ruth Kirk's husband worked at Firestone in Papanui and in the evenings and weekend, built their house in Kaiapoi, where land was cheaper.
7.
Ruth Kirk resigned from the mayoralty in January 1958 after having won the November 1957 election in the Lyttelton electorate.
8.
Ruth Kirk's husband died in August 1974, and in the 1975 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for public services.
9.
Ruth Kirk was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977.
10.
Ruth Kirk largely withdrew from public life in later years, but was famously remembered for ringing a Christchurch talkback radio show in 1993 to voice her fury at Helen Clark's ousting of Mike Moore as Labour party leader.
11.
Ruth Kirk died from cancer in Christchurch on 20 March 2000, and was buried alongside her husband at Waimate in South Canterbury.