Alumni, come see who’s new on the Wall! The Sayville Alumni Association is proud to announce the newest member of our Wall of Distinguished Alumni: Ruth Harris Diuguid Fallon, Sayville High School Class of 1936 — historian, professional writer, and photographer.

Ruth grew up in the Diuguid family home on Edwards Avenue in Sayville — the house locals knew as the “Ice House” — and graduated from Sayville High in June 1936, already writing, photographing, and keeping the detailed diaries that marked the start of a lifetime of preserving everyday life.

Sayville knew her best through “Reflections of the Past,” her long-running column in The Suffolk County News. Week after week, she paired historic photographs — often borrowed from the personal collections of local families — with carefully researched stories, identifying places, dating pictures, and turning private memories into our shared public history. Long before it was fashionable, Ruth understood that a town’s history lives in its people’s photo albums.

Her reach went well beyond the column. She published in national magazines including Seventeen and Highlights for Children, ran her own Ruth Dougherty Photography studio, served as librarian and photographic historian for the Long Island Maritime Museum, co-compiled the 1970 “Pots, Pans and Pictures Cookbook,” led Girl Scouts all the way to the movement’s worldwide governing council, and in 1976 received a Town of Islip commendation for suggesting the name of Over South Lane in Sayville.

If this website’s work feels familiar, it should — Ruth Fallon was doing for Sayville in the pages of the Suffolk County News what the Alumni Association tries to do here today: keeping our town’s people and places from being forgotten.

Come see for yourself — read Ruth’s full profile on our Wall of Distinguished Alumni, and join us in honoring a woman who spent her life making sure Sayville would remember itself. Welcome to the Wall, Ruth!