Ruthe Williams lives alone in a tidy white house on Queen Anne with white lace curtains in the windows. Her front walk bisects her immaculate lawn and leads to four steps, a pot of pansies on each one.
When she opens her door, she is wearing bright pink. The interior walls behind her are white, and the carpet and furnishings are a neutral color. A white cat scurries into another room.
"I don't allow myself to feel lonely," says Ruthe, settling into her favorite chair. In her long life she has had many opportunities to practice that discipline.
Ruth James was born in 1919 in Douglas, Wyo., the youngest daughter of Will and Carrie James. (She added the 'e' to her name later.) Two much older sisters, Louise and Gladys, were born in Iowa, where their mother had family. Before Ruth was born, in the spring of 1917 the family moved to Wyoming and homesteaded 18 miles outside of Douglas. They lived in a tent while Will built a small house and barn before winter blew in. Eventually there was also a deep well, powered by a windmill with wooden spokes that never failed them.
Carrie went into town to give birth to Ruth, and returned to the homestead, where Will eked out a living as a wheat and corn farmer. "I'm told my sisters treated me like a big doll when I arrived," she says.
By the time Ruth was old enough to play independently, her sisters were in town in high school, so she played by herself in a cardboard box behind the house, out of the fierce and constant wind. She also painted murals on the barn walls with water; these were short lived.
Ruth slept in a lean-to bedroom and walked a mile to a small country school. In good weather she took a shortcut across a pasture. "Sometimes I saw meadowlarks under the sagebrush," she says, "nesting and singing."
Winters were harsh. Her father strung a rope between the house, barn and well to use as a guideline during blizzards while going to feed the animals. One winter Ruth's prized possession, a little glass deer filled with cologne, froze and broke. "I felt real bad," she says. "We didn't have a lot of things."
Nineteen-twenty-seven was an eventful year for Ruth. First, history was made when Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in France. Ruth heard the news on the family's battery-operated radio. "It was a world away," she says. "I tried to imagine the excitement."
It was also the only year the family farm turned a profit. Everyone got new clothes; Ruth got a red rubber raincoat and hat. "This was before plastic, you see," she says. Also, her parents traded in their flivver for a green Willys Knight car.
Nonetheless, the Depression came early to farmers. "Even I read the plummeting wheat prices," she says. The stress took its toll on her parents' marriage, and by the end of the year they were separated.
Ruth and her mother moved into Douglas and a small apartment in a Methodist community house, where they lived for free in exchange for her mother doing housework and, coincidentally, Ruth's lifelong conversion to Methodism. Then they moved back to Newton, Iowa, her mother's hometown. Ruth attended high school there and ate supper in a hospital, where her mother worked in the kitchen.
Because she had skipped two grades back in the Wyoming country school, Ruth entered high school in Iowa before she was 12. "I wouldn't recommend it," she says. "I was always struggling to keep up - socially, I mean."
As a teenager, Ruth's favorite song was "Moon Over Miami," which conjured up images of another world away.
SHE GRADUATED from high school at 16 and returned to Douglas, where she lived with sister Gladys and her husband. Eventually Ruth found a job with the phone company, for 25 cents an hour. Soon after, she changed the spelling of her name.
Another eventful year was 1936. Ruthe's father died in a car accident, and she met her future husband, Jack Williams. The two dated for five years before marrying. On one of their more exciting dates they went barnstorming in an airplane, but usually they made an evening of driving around in his parents' car, sometimes with a carload of friends. They pooled their money for gas (32 cents a gallon) and cigarettes (11 cents a pack). Ruthe now suffers from emphysema and regrets that she ever smoked.
Jack and Ruthe wed in September 1941. A member of the Wyoming National Guard, Jack was stationed at Fort Lewis when Pearl Harbor was bombed in December. Ruthe still worked at the phone company back in Douglas. "All hell broke loose on that switchboard," she says.
Jack's unit patrolled the Northwest coast for Japanese submarines. He called Ruthe whenever he had the chance. After one call she cried inexplicably. "I was inconsolable," she says. "It turns out it was the last time we spoke."
In March 1942, Jack's unit was in Roseburg, Ore., housed in temporary barracks, where ammunition was also stored. Early one morning, the ammunition exploded, engulfing the barracks in flames and killing many men in the unit, including Jack.
He and Ruthe had been married only six months.
In anticipation of joining Jack at Fort Lewis, Ruthe had already given notice at the phone company. In a daze after his sudden death, she carried through with her plans to come to this area. For other reasons, her mother, Gladys and her husband had already moved here.
In the summer of 1942, Ruthe's brother-in-law took a job in Denver and they all followed him there, but then returned. Ruthe has lived in Seattle ever since.
RUTHE WORKED AS A civil servant with the Federal Housing Authority for her entire career, starting as a switchboard operator.
After a few "peccadilloes" with men, in 1948 she settled down with a man named John. Because John had been married several times before, they never married, but they were loyal partners for 18 years. In those days, theirs was a risqué living arrangement, but not disapproved of by Ruthe's mother, who lived with them.
They bought Ruthe's present home in 1952 and built a summer cottage near Five Mile Lake in South King County. "It was a very special place," says Ruthe. "We built it from the ground up. We'd have drinks on Friday nights at the Elks Club in Puyallup, and work all weekend on the cottage. It had a lovely view of Mount Rainier."
In 1966, John died suddenly of a heart attack. Five weeks later, Ruthe's mother died. Reeling from the double blow, Ruthe received support from her sister Gladys, by then a widow herself. Gladys moved in with Ruthe a few months later and lived with her for the rest of her life.
Ruthe continued with her job at the FHA, advancing through positions as a secretary, underwriting assistant and complaints officer. "That one finished me off," she laughs. She paid off her house and retired in 1976.
As is not uncommon, she suffered from depression after retiring. "What saved my bacon," she says, "was a part-time job I got at the American Cancer Society, overseeing the telephone crew." She worked there mornings for 10 years and had summers off, enabling her to travel.
With Gladys or a friend, Ruthe traveled to every state except Michigan and to many countries. She dressed up to fly on airplanes and collected small bells as souvenirs. But her travels have come to an end. "I won't fly anymore," she says. "It's too crowded." Also, her sister Gladys died in 2003, at age 95.
Ruthe has come a long way from the Wyoming homestead, and she does not regret her troubles.
"What's done is done," she says.
"You know," she continues, "they say if everyone put their troubles in a pile, and they had a chance to take someone else's, they'd take back their own.
"That's what I'd do," she says.
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