Artist, teacher, businesswoman Ruth Karp, who helped save UM’s basketball team, dies at 96
If Dr. Seuss hadn’t written “Oh! The Places You’ll Go” first, South Florida’s own Ruth Karp probably could have given it a go — with her own spin on the title.
Her affectionate book might have borne the title, “Oh! The Stories I’ll Tell.” Of all the interesting things Karp accomplished in her near-century of living were the stories she shared, her son, former Miami-Dade School Board member Martin Karp fondly recalls.
Karp, who died Tuesday morning, June 15, at her Bal Harbour home at age 96, was an exhibited and published artist. A pre-school teacher in Miami Beach. A fruit company co-owner and co-founder. A girls’ softball coach. The first woman president of the University of Miami’s Hurricane Club. And she helped bring the basketball program back to UM.
She might even have scored in show business when she auditioned for the chorus of the 1941 musical “Best Foot Forward” that starred June Allyson — who reprised her role alongside Lucille Ball in the 1943 film adaptation. Karp was accepted, her son said, but didn’t take the part in the chorus. According to family history, an older brother told her that “women are supposed to do steno and typing and discouraged her.”
But she did win on television’s “The Price Is Right” in the 1970s, her son said.
In her elegant manner, she delighted in sharing her life’s stories, her son said, and she did so through her 90s.
Mom, the storyteller
Born March 28, 1925, in Jamaica Queens, New York, and raised during the Great Depression, Karp vividly remembered watching Civil War veterans marching in parades on Veterans Day. They would have been in their 70s and 80s when she was 5, her son said. But she was able to share those childhood memories through her 90s.
“Think of someone in 2021 who saw Civil War veterans,” her son marvels.
Perhaps that early memory instilled in Karp a sense of duty.
During World War II, while her soon-to-be husband of more than 72 years served in Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd U.S. Army, Karp supported the war effort by helping make headphones for pilots by soldering the pieces together. She learned Yiddish as a child, and for the rest of her life, supported Jewish causes and charities and fought antisemitism.
One of Karp’s favorite stories centered on her family. Her parents were first cousins. Her son relays the story she would tell:
“Two sisters met under a moonlit night on a bridge and planned that if one had a boy and one had a girl, they’d be betrothed. And, sure enough, one had a boy and one had a girl in 1888, and they got married years later. That was the deal made between two sisters.”
A fruitful deal
In 1950, four years after they wed, Ruth and her husband Irving moved to Miami Beach.
By 1960, the pair established the Carnival Fruit Co. with a store on Sixth Street and Meridian on Miami Beach, a warehouse on 1 Alton Road and a warehouse and store in North Miami Beach.
The retail produce store in Miami Beach started with a single 1.5-ton pickup truck and grew to a fleet of more than 70 trucks, the Miami Herald reported in 2018. Carnival Fruit distributed produce wholesale across South Florida and the Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas.
Carnival Fruit, which finally closed for good in 2009, had always operated as a mom-and-pop business. In 2018, when her husband died at 94, Ruth Karp told the Herald, “Everybody was one of the family. They used to call him ‘Hey Irving.’ They called me ‘Ms. Ruth.’ I got the respect.”
Karp also joined the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, where she coached girls’ softball at Flamingo Park in the 1950s. As a Cub Scout leader, she helped the Boy Scouts integrate its sports programs. By 1960, she was a pre-school teacher at a program that was held at Flamingo Park.
“When I was in the program there as a young boy, she was always very, very nurturing,” recalled Books & Books’ founder Mitchell Kaplan. “I remember her very fondly.”
The colorblind artist
As an artist in watercolors and acrylics, Karp was a signature member of the National Watercolor Society. Her paintings were published in books and exhibited in galleries nationally, and locally at the Coconut Grove Arts Festival.
She delighted in visiting schools around South Florida and sharing her story of being an artist who also just happened to be colorblind.
“After the demonstrations she would reveal her colorblindness and the children would always be shocked,” her son said. “Students learned a valuable lesson — that you can overcome obstacles.”
UM sports fan
After her husband retired in 1984, Ruth and Irving tapped into her love of sports by becoming involved with UM athletics. The couple were among a group of donors whose contributions of more than $50,000 helped revive the university’s basketball program in the mid-1980s after a 14-year absence.
Her fondness for sports, and background, was immense. She dressed impeccably, her son said — and often in the UM colors of green, white and orange. “At football games, when the flag was thrown, she knew the penalty before the penalty was called,” her son said.
Karp was once awarded a plaque as the two-millionth fan at Madison Square Garden during a Big East Tournament when UM played a Big East basketball game.
Survivors, services
Karp is survived by her children Janice and Martin, and grandsons Matt, Eric, Herschel, Benjamin and Samson.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 16, at Riverside Gordon Memorial Chapel, 17250 W. Dixie Hwy., North Miami Beach. Burial is at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Mount Nebo/Miami Memorial Gardens, 5505 NW Third St., West Miami.
This story was originally published June 15, 2021 at 6:25 PM.
