Janet Rouff Richardson

Janet Rouff Richardson, born August 14, 1940 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died October 24, 2016 in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Janet was the second of seven children born to Agnes and Ernest Rouff. All of her grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her brother contracted polio in 1952 and she was in the clinical trials of the Salk vaccine. She was educated in the Pittsburgh public schools. She gave the commencement address at Schenley High School. The subject was Sputnik, the satellite recently launched by Russia. She attended Marietta College and graduated from the University of Washington. Her major was English. (She read Paradise Lost). She had a career in Social Work, in the area of Child Abuse and Neglect. She began as a volunteer at the private agency SCAN in Fayetteville, Arkansas, eventually becoming director of the local office. She moved to the Arkansas Department of Human Services where she worked for 20 years. She became head of the two-county office of DCFS. In public service she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Fayetteville Housing Authority, ultimately its Chairman. At home she was a good cook, knitter, and seamstress. She enjoyed hiking (she met her future husband in a hiking club), biking, sailing, sea kayaking, and swimming. These activities took her around the U.S. and to Mexico, Belize, the Caribbean, England, France, and Switzerland. Janet is survived by her husband of 57 years, Charles Richardson of Madison, Tennessee, her daughters, Joan Herrera of Falls Church Virginia, and Martha Moore of Nashville, and four grandchildren. The family would like to acknowledge the excellent care received over the years by her cardiologist Dr. Joel Carver and over the past year by Michelle Ianosic, Hendersonville.