Ruby Jean Bierman Adams, formerly of Washington, N.C., set sail with her sweetheart Joy on January 17, 2026, with her daughter, Trish, by her side. She was 92 years old.

Born November 11, 1933 in the farmland of eastern Beaufort County, N.C., Ruby was the last of seven children of Frederick and Nellie Wallace Bierman. Ruby grew up both destitute and hardy, with memories of a gaggle of rambunctious cousins, chasing trains for rides to “town,” and picking potato bugs with her mother for nickel wages. She and her mother Nellie spent some nights in barn lofts between homes. Her father, Frederick, was an immigrant from Liverpool, England, and served in World War I. He suffered from an undiagnosed neurological condition and was committed to "Dix Hill" (later named Dorothea Dix Hospital) during all of Ruby’s childhood. He died there in 1949 when she was 15. 

As a teenager, Ruby went to live with Waddell "Pop" and Myrtle Miller in Washington so she could attend Washington High School. She worked hard for her keep with the Millers and kept up a lifelong relationship with them until their deaths. She graduated salutatorian in 1952 and attended Flora MacDonald College for two years, under the beneficence of the Wanoca Presbyterian Church, with the understanding that she would work for the church after graduation. Once Ruby cottoned this mostly involved organizing ladies’ social functions, she opted instead to leave school and marry her hometown sweetheart, Joy Adams, on June 20, 1954. The union was regarded dubiously by their elders and endured without skipping a heartbeat for 69 years, 10 months, and 17 days until Joy’s death on May 7, 2024.

One of Ruby’s first jobs was for the nascent Chamber of Commerce in Washington, where she hit the pavements and eagerly tried to conjole the sleepy business community with boosterism and community synergy. Joy and Ruby spent a few years in Raleigh, where their only child, Patricia Bryan (Trish), was born on September 19, 1959. They then ventured to the wilds of the San Francisco Bay Area, where Joy served in the Army and Ruby started her career in banking. Although the couple loved the Bay Area, Army life did not suit Joy and they returned to Washington so he could work with his family at the Pamlico Social Club, and later the Brentwood Lodge.

Ruby found work at the Home Savings and Loan, where she spent more than 30 years, rising to Secretary-Treasurer from the humble ranks of teller, in an era when women weren’t even allowed a credit card in their own name. She learned to endure and thrive in a world where men were the de facto managers and bosses regardless of relative merits, and she mentored a handful of women in those changing times. 

Forged by a Depression childhood, Ruby found her calling in the virtues and joys of thrift, the magic of “compound interest,” and the triumph of owning her own home — a feat she singlemindedly accomplished when she and Joy bought their first home together on East 13th Street in 1967. 

In 1976, she and Joy enlisted contractor Ralph Dramstad and built a custom mid-century style ranch, unconventional for its time, in Smallwood. The family of three enjoyed sailing on the weekends in their sloop “Triad,” often with one of Trish’s friends in tow. Ruby bestowed on her only child the best gifts: the freedom to enjoy the choices she never had, with the knowledge that anything worth having will take hard work and doggedness. 

When she and Joy retired, they set sail for over a year on their Island Packet, Razzmatazz, down the Intracoastal Waterway, eventually weighing anchor in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they built a home. They spent the next two decades there, settling in Rotonda West, and enjoying visits from Trish and her son, Devin. After Joy’s death in May 2024, Ruby moved to the Philadelphia area to be close to Trish. Until her final weeks, she was on her feet, and keeping her companions on their toes with her sardonic outlook and no-nonsense assessment of life’s realities.

Ruby was predeceased by her husband, Joy Sykes Adams, her parents and her six siblings, Della Cockrell, Edith Tripp, Rachel Baynor Lilley, Charles (Charlie) Bierman, Joseph Bierman, and Virginia (Ginny) Beretta, her sister- and brother-in-law, Carolyn Adams Grist and Shepherd Grist, her nieces Gail Baynor Wallace and Vicky Grist Barris. She is survived by her only child, Patricia (Trish) Adams and her wife, Jill Healy; her grandson, Devin Adams, and his husband, John Riley; and many nieces and nephews including nieces Jami Grist Burns (Gary) of Chapel Hill  and Lucy Grist Walker (Larry) of Washington and their families.

Having clambered through a roughshod childhood, Ruby lived out her dreams of achievement and hard-earned prosperity, always maintaining a frugal lifestyle, treating each day with purpose, and supporting the dreams of her family: That was, for her, the meaning of abundance. Those who knew her will find George Eliot's epitaph apt: "The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." 

In lieu of charitable donations, Ruby would want you to create and maintain a solid savings plan for yourself and your family, especially if you are young, and keep at it!