Ruth Ellen Gibbs is listed in NamUs as a missing person, case MP13715, associated with Rochester, Vermont. She was 74 years old at the time of last contact, identified as a White/Caucasian female, with red or auburn hair and unknown eye color. NamUs records her date of last contact as August 28, 2011, and lists the investigating agency as the Vermont State Police – Vermont Intelligence Center.
Her case remains published in NamUs, and the provided case data does not show a resolution status of Alive or Deceased, so it should be treated as unresolved based on the available information.
The circumstances of Ruth Gibbs’s disappearance are tied to the catastrophic flooding that struck Rochester during Tropical Storm Irene. According to the case information, she was missing from Woodlawn Cemetery during flooding caused by Hurricane Irene. This was not a typical missing-person disappearance involving a last sighting in daily life; rather, her case appears connected to the destruction of the cemetery and the loss or displacement of remains during the storm. The available public information is limited and does not provide a detailed personal timeline beyond the location, date, and storm-related circumstances.
Woodlawn Cemetery was severely damaged when Nason Brook, normally a small waterway, swelled violently during the storm. Reporting from the period described floodwaters digging into the bank behind the cemetery and washing out approximately 50 graves. Some remains were recovered, but others were carried downstream toward the White River and were not found. The situation left families and the Rochester community facing the painful task of identifying, recovering, and respectfully reinterring loved ones after a natural disaster disturbed a place meant to be permanent and peaceful.
Public reporting described the aftermath as especially difficult because some remains were found in caskets while others were scattered or missing, creating complicated identification challenges. In the year after Irene, local reporting stated that more than two dozen sets of remains were still missing after being washed downstream. This broader context helps explain why Ruth Gibbs’s NamUs case exists: her disappearance is part of a larger storm-related cemetery disaster in which floodwaters displaced remains and left some people unaccounted for.
Because the attached case data does not indicate that Ruth Gibbs has been found alive or located deceased, and because the public NamUs listing remains published as a missing-person case, there is no clear online confirmation that her case has been closed. The exact outcome is unknown from the available sources. What is clear is that Ruth Gibbs’s case represents a tragic and compassionate reminder of the human toll of Tropical Storm Irene in Vermont, extending beyond the immediate destruction of homes, roads, and towns to the grief of families whose loved ones’ resting places were disturbed by floodwaters.Last Seen: Aug 28, 2011
