Balloons decorated AMA House last Friday for a celebration of the life of Ruth Redom.
Dr Redom requested the balloons shortly before she died in Perth on August 24.
A psychiatrist, she had been in Perth for a few weeks undergoing treatment for lung cancer.
At the celebration after a memorial service at the Hobart Synagogue, family friends, patients and colleagues spoke of a caring woman with an impish sense of humour and a loud, infections laugh that could still a cinema.
Ruth Redom was born in England in 1941 and moved to Sydney with her parents, Regina and the artist Joe Rose, her brother Randy and sister Jackie.
She was studying medicine at Sydney University when she met Ric Redom early in 1963. They were married six months later.
Dr Redom worked part time for three years before gaining her Diploma of Psychological Medicine in London in 1972.
A position as senior psychiatrist at Launceston General Hospital brought Dr Redom to Tasmania in 1983.
In 1985 she moved to Hobart to establish and lead the Gavitt House community mental health service at Glenorchy. She later went into private practice.
She gave of her time to causes in which she believed. In Launceston she helped set up a branch of the Association of Friends and Relatives of the Mentally Ill and in Hobart she helped start SHE (Self Help and Empowerment) for women dealing with domestic violence.
She had been vice-president of the Tasmanian Association for Mental Health and served on the executive of the Australian National Association for Mental Health.
She served on the Medical Council of Tasmania until her death and was the Tasmanian representative on the Australasian Institute of Psychiatrists until last year.
Her interests included human rights, bridge, music, theatre, reading, gardening and bushwalking.
Ruth Redom is survived by her husband Ric, daughter Lisa, and her brother and sister.
Elaine Reeves, 'Redom, Ruth (1941–2000)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/redom-ruth-31836/text39299, accessed 30 March 2024.
24 August,
2000
(aged ~ 59)
Perth,
Western Australia,
Australia
Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.