WILTSHIRE LIFE Awards 2018 37
Pride of Wiltshire Award
Winner Lady Ruth Hawley Ruth is someone
Lady Ruth Hawley was born and brought up in the West Country, the daughter of a vicar. She
joined Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service at the age of 18 and was posted to Vietnam and Egypt,
where she met her husband, Donald. They were posted with the HM Diplomatic Service to
Nigeria, Iraq, Oman and Malaysia.
When they were in Oman, Ruth became interested in traditional Omani silversmithing and
wrote a book about it, published in 2000. She was also the first woman to climb Jabal Akhdar,
the highest mountain in Oman (3,000ft).
Ruth and her husband moved to Wiltshire when her husband retired in 2012. Ruth became
involved in many aspects of local Wiltshire life, serving on the Wiltshire health trust, as regional
representative for Wiltshire St John’s Ambulance and many other charities, including Ask (a
charity providing support to carers of children with special needs) and the Wiltshire and Bath
Independent Living Trust.
In 1998 she was appointed High Sheriff of Wiltshire, and in 1999 became a Deputy
Lieutenant. She is a Lay Canon of Salisbury Cathedral and a governor of Godolphin School.
Ruth was a patron of the Well Woman Clinic and a trustee of Medical Support in Romania,
in which role she took van loads of medical supplies to desperately under-resourced health
centres in Romania. She has been a trustee and patron of Futures for Women, a charity that
helps support women in their careers.
Ruth is president of Salisbury Mencap, a trustee of the Harnham Water Meadows Trust,
and an ambassador for Alabare, a Wiltshire-based charity that supports vulnerable, homeless
and marginalised people, helping them transform their lives by providing accommodation and
helping them gain skills, confidence and opportunities to live a fulfilled life.
Ruth is someone who gets things done, a ‘doer’, but in a capable, thoughtful and diplomatic
way. She encourages others and gives constructive, helpful and wise advice when asked. The
people and communities of Wiltshire have hugely benefitted from her presence in our county.
Ruth loves to travel and has visited in recent years Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia and
Costa Rica, as well as many places closer to home.
In 2014, Ruth was one of the first patients to receive radical new proton beam therapy for
eye cancer. She has four children and eight grandchildren.
By The High Sheriff of Wiltshire, Lady Marland
who gets things
done, a ‘doer’, but in a
capable, thoughtful and
diplomatic way
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