Roma Claire Guth, age 83, died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Oak Ridge. She was married to the late Dr. Eugene Guth, a physicist at ORNL and professor of physics. She was born on Aug. 9, 1922, in Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada, the daughter of Stephen and Mary Laura Lynch. Her father was third-generation Canadian, but of Irish ancestry, and her mother was French Canadian from Nova Scotia.

Both of her parents were devout Roman Catholics and raised Roma in their faith. She was the youngest daughter and the sixth of seven children born to her parents. Roma grew up on her family’s farm in Alberta. Shortly before Roma turned 16, her mother died from melanoma. She always revered her mother as a saint.

She met her future husband, Eugene Guth, in 1946, when he traveled on vacation to a Canadian resort town, where she was a schoolteacher. Her husband always had an interest in education and decided to visit the local school, where he met his future wife. Five days after meeting her, Eugene Guth proposed to her, and the marriage lasted a lifetime.

From 1947 – 1957, she lived in South Bend, Indiana, while her husband was a Research Professor of Physics at Notre Dame University. Her first two children were born in South Bend. In 1957, the family moved to Oak Ridge, when Eugene Guth accepted a position as technical advisor to the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She had two additional children and resided in Oak Ridge for the next 48 years.

Roma Guth had a gentle heart. For more than ten years, she used to leave each week a two-gallon thermos filled with ice water and four fresh clean cups for the garbage men to get a drink. She believed and taught her family that all people, including garbage men, deserved to be treated with dignity as humans, and she took to heart the biblical teaching “when I was thirsty, you gave me to drink.”

Coupled with her spiritual side was a very human side that was carved from experiences growing up in a large farming family. She cared less about hard work or doing a "man's job" than she did about creating a home for her family. She had very good carpentry skills and built shelves for the family home’s recreation room, bathrooms, and her husband’s study. She prefabricated storm windows for the interior of the house that are still used today, 30 years later. After her husband retired, she built two houses -- as a general contractor -- on Wexgate road in Karns.

Many of her friends from St. Mary’s went with her on one-day pilgrimages that she organized to Conyers, GA, for the reported apparitions of the Mary, the mother of Jesus. Although she lived with Alzheimer’s disease for more than eight years, she never lost the ability to carry on ordinary conversations, and she continued to eat out at restaurants in Oak Ridge two or three times per week, including the night before she passed away.

Together with her husband, she raised four well-educated children, each of whom obtained graduate degrees. She is survived by her son Terry Guth and his wife Pat of Houston, TX, and two grandchildren, Jordan and Brittany Guth; a daughter Laura (Guth) Kubisiak and her husband Mike of Portland, OR, and two grandchildren, Elise and Patrick Kubisiak, a son Michael Guth, a local attorney and her caregiver for many years, and a son-in-law David Pasta and grandson, Brian, of Palo Alto, CA. Her eldest daughter, Gloria, died from complications caused by breast cancer treatment three years earlier. Viola Ergen of Oak Ridge was a special and dear friend.

The family received friends an hour before the funeral mass, held at 11:30 AM on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2005, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, followed by internment at the Oak Ridge Memorial Park. Plans for a rosary service the evening before the funeral were not complete at this time. Martin’s Funeral Home in Oak Ridge was in charge of the arrangements.

Michael A. S. Guth, Ph.D., J.D., is a constitutional law attorney, legal brief writer, and health care researcher based in Oak Ridge, TN. A web page describing his law practice and other legal writings is available at http://michaelguth.com His current research comprises inefficiencies in health care insurance, pharmaceutical pricing, and best available treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol. He has developed and/or taught more than twenty on-line courses at more than a dozen educational institutions in the areas of economics, finance, business strategy, business law, health care administration, politics, and criminal justice. Interested students are encouraged to view his web page at and click on some of the papers and articles he has written.

• The 14 October 1973 Uprising – Dying for a Cause


• Samurai Swords - The Art of Iaido


• Picasso Van Gogh and Beyond. The Hues of Passion Art of Today and thru the Ages


• People Who Make a Difference - Get Smart - Missed It... by that Much!


• Paper on Hamlet and His Possible Madness


• Shakespeare Biography


• Edgan Allen Poe Biography - Famous American Authors


• A Romantic Tale About an Unromantic Hero


• Soldier to Lifes Battles


• The Life of Francisco Goya