He received his undergraduate degree from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.

Later, he advanced his studies in surgery at Northwestern University, where he began working with Loyal Davis, stepfather of Nancy Reagan.

[1] Ruge resigned after Reagan's first term and called his job "vastly overrated, boring and not medically challenging".

The White House physician can enter the Oval Office or Executive Residence at any time; Ruge sometimes invited experts visiting Washington to examine the president.

[3] He died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm on August 30, 2005, at age 88, in Denver, Colorado.