SR1536 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR1536 LRB101 22895 LAW 73986 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to learn of the death of Gene Ruoff, who passed away on January 4, 2020 at the age of 80; and

WHEREAS, Gene Ruoff was born to Robert G. Ruoff and Thelma L. O'Hara Ruoff on July 23, 1939; he was raised in Paducah, Kentucky; he earned his bachelor's degree from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky in 1961; he obtained his Master of Science in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1963; he married A. LaVonne Brown in 1967; together, they primarily lived in Oak Park and Glen Ellyn; he adopted her children, Stephen Charles and Sharon Louise; he earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970; and

WHEREAS, Gene Ruoff was a faculty member and former administrator at the University of Illinois at Chicago; he directed the UIC Institute for the Humanities, where he mentored the fellows and organized programs; he also led summer institutes for high-school teachers, including Jane Austen: The Society and the Self, Jane Addams's Hull House Humanities Program, The Romantics and Us, and Literature in an Age of Revolutions; he became an associate vice chancellor in 1994; he served as associate provost and special assistant to the chancellor for Information and Management Systems from 1996 until his retirement in 2009; in this position, he supervised UIC's computer system and coordinated UIC's collaboration with the Urbana-Champaign and Springfield campuses to create a unified computer system; and

WHEREAS, Gene Ruoff was a prolific writer and a scholar of English romantic literature; in 1989, he wrote Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Making of the Major Lyrics, 1801-04; in 1991, he covered Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility; he also edited a number of critical essay collections; and

WHEREAS, Over a 31 year period, Gene Ruoff and his wife passionately restored their 1893 three-story Victorian home, which became part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Plus tour of Oak Park; for this work, they received a State of Illinois Restoration Grant and were awarded a prize for interior decoration by the Historical Society of Oak Park; and

WHEREAS, Gene Ruoff is survived by his brothers, Robert A. Ruoff and Charles O. Ruoff; his sister-in-law, Suzanne Brown; and his daughter-in-law, Cheryl Moffitt Ruoff; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of Gene Ruoff and extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Gene Ruoff as an expression of our deepest sympathy.