Philanthropist Ruth Perelman dies

RUTH CAPLAN Perelman was content to sit back and let her hard-driving husband, Raymond G., tear up the business world - sort of.

There were times when Ruth was "quick to correct him when she disagrees," a writer said in an Inquirer profile of the Perelmans in 2007.

"Ruth is quieter but keenly aware and committed, sort of a wise counselor," Gail M. Harrity, president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said at the time. "Together they make a fabulous duo."

Ruth Perelman died yesterday of pneumonia at age 90. She and her husband lived in Rittenhouse Square.

The Perelmans were major contributors to a variety of institutions in Philadelphia over the years, making the Perelman name ubiquitous in the city.

There was $6 million for the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center, $15 million for the Perelman Building at the Museum of Art, and $3 million for the Perelman Jewish Day School with campuses in Lower Merion and Melrose Park.

When the couple married 70 years ago, Ruth said, she "had a clue" about her husband's hard-driving ambition, "though I had no idea he would be this successful.

"He just felt he had to do these things. It's a fire in his belly."

Her husband expressed his workaholic nature by buying and selling "between 30 and 50 companies" over the years, the Inquirer profile said.

But Ruth was a force in philanthropy on her own. She had chaired the Harvest Ball to benefit Albert Einstein Medical Center, and in 2007, co-chaired the ball celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Academy of Music.

Ruth was a native of New Haven, Conn. She attended Greensboro Women's College, in North Carolina. She met her husband in Greensboro when he was there on business. They married in 1941. The Perelmans were members of Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, where they formerly lived.

Besides her husband, Ruth is survived by two sons, Jeffrey and Ronald; a sister, Phyllis Horton, eight grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

Services: 3 p.m. today at Beth Sholom, 8231 Old York Road, Elkins Park. Burial will be in Montefiore Cemetery, Rockledge.