Lake Wylie woman lived to help others

Ruth Sheets spent decades caring for people in their final days. In hers, friends recall a woman who made her community a better place to live.

Sheets, 63, died Jan. 20. She spent years as a hairdresser at Hair Is Us in Lake Wylie. She left that business to run Local Motion Bar & Grill. Yet her business accomplishments were only part of her legacy, along with extensive charitable work and particularly with Hospice groups in Rock Hill.

“She had friends who were going through Hospice care, and she said that was her way of helping and paying it forward,” said daughter Angela Carpenter.

In 1998, Sheets won the Lake Wylie Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year award. Chamber president Susan Bromfield said Sheets answered the call of community members in need “with enthusiasm.” Whether purchasing toys for local children at Christmas or cutting the hair of a woman in failing health, Sheets helped.

“Ruth’s heart was always good,” Bromfield said. “She just had that heart to help people, always.”

The passion Sheets had for Hospice work was decades old. Bromfield said since about the early 1990s.

“We got turkey dinners delivered to Hospice people who weren’t going to have dinner,” she said.

When Sheets owned Local Motion, she noticed the Ohio State/Michigan college football game annually drew a big crowd. When one of her biggest Buckeye fans died of cancer, Sheets turned the game in following years into a Hospice fundraiser. The event raised major funds for Hospice, highlighted by a 2006 event when both undefeated teams were ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the country.

“She saw opportunities where they could raise money,” Bromfield said.

Joanie Grubb, herself a cancer survivor and fundraiser, was involved in the ballgame events and later partnered with Sheets to create Helping Hands of Lake Wylie.

“Ruth was helping Hospice years before I ever knew her,” Grubb said. “Ruth’s heart and soul was into helping the folks at Hospice with anything you could imagine.”

Sheets often told the story of how she got involved with Hospice decades ago as a hairdresser. What started small, grew.

“She started with a Christmas tree and a couple hundred dollars,” Grubb said.

Since beginning more than five years ago, Helping Hands grew into an organization collecting money year-round. This Christmas, the group supported 29 Hospice families.

“Even though she wasn’t able to do as much with her health, she was still part of that,” Grubb said.

Sheets won awards and commendations for her fundraising. She also made time for her family, which wasn’t exclusive to relatives.

“Part of what made her special was just her love for her friends,” Carpenter said. “She was a very loyal friend, and she was my best friend even though she was my mother.”

Even when friends suffered from poor health, as Sheets did since 2014, she helped them with daily tasks, and she encouraged them.

“If you were her friend, then you never had to look for a friend,” Carpenter said.

Sheets had the organization to run businesses and plan trips for three dozen locals as a charitable fundraiser. She also had her more impulsive side. Carpenter recalls her mother getting a small dog, Muffin. Sheets didn’t follow the traditional order, but loved the dog she found.

“She said, I’m going to get a dog, and I’m going to name it Muffin,” Carpenter said. “And she did. She named it before she ever even saw it.”

As for decades of helping people in Hospice care, care she herself received in her final days, the people who best knew Sheets say efforts were anything but obligation.

“It was just stuff she enjoyed,” Carpenter said. “It’s what she wanted to do.”

A gathering of family and friends was held Jan. 25 at M.L. Ford & Sons Funeral Home in Lake Wylie.

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 1:48 PM with the headline "Lake Wylie woman lived to help others."