Obituary of Mayme Ruffing

In Memorium Mayme Louise McNelly Ruffing (Hart) November 2, 1917—September 28th, 2016 Tuesday evening, September 27th, mother had dinner with us in the kitchen. Chip's a great cook, and she was a great eater, and she finished all her broccoli. I helped her to her bedroom, asked her I she needed help getting her shoes off and putting on her jammies and she said nicely, but firmly-- no-- she could do it herself. As was characteristic. And so she did, and she turned out the light. When I went down in the morning to check on her, I found she had died peacefully in her sleep during the night, one month and four days short of 99. That part of the story illustrates two things: the limits of broccoli's health benefits, and her extraordinary sense of independence right up to the end. Independence, if there is a theme for her life, is probably it. The tale to be told is how she got to be 99. And it involves history. A lot of history. Records succumb to flood and fire, and misplacement, and sometimes never exist in the first place. All those things affected our family records, but, late in her life, with the help of Chip and google, and many other people and the remaining records, mother became a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She described herself as a proud American and a patriot-- she not only voted, she worked on the election board-- and for years wanted to join. It turns out she was eligible on both her dad's and mom's side of the family, and I explored the Hart side. I will always wonder if my grandmother and grandfather's attraction to each other was in some way fed by some trait in their family's histories of rebellion. In fact, knowing what I know now, I might have called her parents' (Mac and Iva's) relationship "the second war of independence," but they held their relationship together to the end. I'll try to just hit the high points. It turns out mother descends from a long line of blacksmiths. The record begins with Steven Hart, born in 1568, who married Mehitable Estes in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. They had a son named Thomas Francis in 1610, who married Anne Haddaway in 1628. They left England on the ship "Desire" for Boston, in 1635. He was a tanner. They had a son named Thomas Francis Hart, Jr, born in 1640 in Massachusetts. Like his father, he was a tanner. He became a lieutenant and a soldier in King Phillip's war. He married Mary Norton in 1664; they had 8 children, including Captain Samuel hart. He was a blacksmith. He married Mary Evans in 1699, and they had 13 children, (he was a very busy blacksmith), among them Colonel John Hart, also a blacksmith, and an Ensign, then Colonel, in the New Hampshire Regiment. He died during the Revolutionary War, in 1777. He owned the land which became Portsmouth, New Hampshire's old north burial ground, and is buried there. He married Abigail Landale, and they had four children together, one of whom was George, born in 1730. He was a blacksmith--and farmer, and signed the association test in 1776. He married Mary Brewster, and they had 5 children, including first-born George Jr. He was a blacksmith, signed the Association Test, and was a soldier in the Continental Army. Their second-born, John, was a Captain, who married Sarah Willey, and had 7 children with her, the sixth of which was William, who was born in Conway, New Hampshire, in 1796. He is third great-grandfather. He was a blacksmith. He married Hannah Randall in 1819. William and Hannah had three children, the second of which was Gideon Randall Hart, my great great grandfather (we're closing in now). Gideon was not a blacksmith. He had a medical deferment on his civil war physical for "curvature of the spine," I assume meaning scoliosis, a genetic trait mother shared. I think he wasn't a blacksmith because it made his back hurt. He must have shared the independence gene however, because in his early 20s he moved to the then territory of Minnesota from New Hampshire during the Sioux uprising in the 1850s, probably 1853. His occupation on census is mechanic, and later, cabinetmaker. He worked for a furniture company named Stees and Hunt in St. Paul, as a foreman, and I suspect kept the machinery running. Because shipping was expensive and uncertain, it was common to sell belongings, move, and buy new furniture in the new location; Dovetails, always the rate limiting step, had been recently mechanized. Stees and Hunt prospered, built the first 3 story cast-iron storefront in St. Paul, and Gideon had a big house in Lafayette Square, at the time "the place to live" in St. Paul. (That area is now largely a railyard and there is a detention center on the house lot. The only remaining artifact of Lafayette Square is the manhole cover for the water supply where the fountain in the center of its central park used to stand.) He married Julia Metcalf Allen Parry in 1861. They had two children, one of whom lived to adulthood, George Randall Hart, mother's grandfather. Gideon bought a farm in Eureka, Minnesota 30 miles south of St. Paul and at an early age, George, his son, became the farm manager, as he is listed in the census. There was also a tree farm and mill in Minnesota which George R managed. Gideon moved his aging father out from New Hampshire, and William died at the shop, and although Gideon late in life moved out with his son George to the farm, Gideon, Julia his wife, Julia his daughter and William are buried in the historic cemetery in central St. Paul. Gideon died in January, 1905. (Mother used to tell an old family story that Julia , Gideon's wife died of pneumonia in the winter from exposure from visiting her daughter Julia's (who died at age 11) grave every day. Once we knew where Gideon lived, we got on google maps and found there had been a streetcar line near the house. It ran very close to both the furniture store in downtown St. Paul and to the cemetery, which we found to be less than a mile away. We found them there. The cemetery kept scrupulous records and listed the daughter's cause of death as atrial abscess, a complication of strep carditis. Julia the mom died of valvular heart disease, also commonly from strep at that time. I cannot help but wonder if they got strep at the same time and both died of complications from that episode.) The only remaining record of their marriage is the family obelisk which states: "wife of. " Minnesota was a territory and didn't keep marriage records, and the Presbyterian church burned down. George R married Mary Edith Curry June 1st, 1887. When she developed tuberculosis, they moved to Idaho, felt by the doctor, because of its drier air, to be healthier for his wife. Their eldest daughter was already here with her husband (Iva and Mac), and they bought a contiguous farm. They had seven children, in this order: Iva Pearl, Walter, Mary Ethel, Charles C, Ira C, Clara, and Florence. George R died in 1947; Mary Edith died of tuberculosis in 1923, seven years after moving to Idaho. My grandmother Iva met Charles E McNelly while she was attending an agricultural school in Minnesota, which later became the University of Minnesota. He a student, and was sweeping the hallway outside her room. His father was an attorney and state senator (and interestingly, I found the order for the state house furniture, including the gavels, made by Stees and Hunt, the other great great grandfather's company). Chares E, always known as Mac, apparently was an independent child himself, from a long line of same leading back to the revolution. She graduated-- he said he Quituated, and left school to marry her. They were married in 1887, and Iva was born the next year in Farmington, Minnesota. They moved to Idaho, to recently opened irrigated farmland (mother said he pulled sagebrush by hand) and were later joined by her dad and mother, George and Mary. Now, grandmother was not a blacksmith, but she must have had an iron will. While mowing hay one day with her favorite team, a horsefly irritated one of the horses; so while in motion she walked out on the tongue to swat it off, but fell into the mower and cut off a leg. She managed to staunch the blood flow, crawl back to the house, and survive. Her brother Ira carved a wooden legs which she used the rest of her life. Mac and Iva raised their family in a one bedroom room prove-up shack which is mostly still standing, heated with a woodstove I remember well. Mother remembers it getting so hot one winter that it set the wallpaper behind it on fire and she remembered the flames crawling up the wall before it was put out. They had four children, Mayme, Eugene, Edith and Donald. Mother was born November 2, 1917. As a frame of reference, The czar was still tenuously in power, although Lenin began the Russian revolution 5 days later. World War One was still raging and ended almost exactly one year later. The next year brought an influenza epidemic that killed more people than WWI. Woodrow Wilson was president, George the 5th the English king and the dowager empress still ruled in China. Women won the right to vote three years later. Except for the death of Eugene, about which she could become tearful at the mention to the day she died, mother described her childhood as happy. They were not monetarily rich; she described happily dust between her toes as a child, because shoes were only worn to school in winter, and she rode a horse to school, put upon it by her dad until she was big enough to mount by herself. Iva drove the schoolwagon later, picking up children on the way. School, still standing, is about a mile away. They were surrounded by a close knit family and friends. A self-described tomboy, she told stories about getting in trouble for riding horses with friends to the canal to go swimming in the summer (which was forbidden)—still smiled about it. She remembered being thrown headlong into a cactus patch when her horse spooked and stopped abruptly on the way to school. She did well in school, loved to read, and granddad, across the fields, had a serious library. After high school, she went to business college; after that, she held jobs as a bookkeeper and stenographer/secretary at an electric company and a car repair garage until she stopped at age 32 due to pregnancy ( with me) and stayed home to raise kids, at daddy's insistence. And yes, she could balance a checkbook. She told a story about the guys at the electric company who hooked a device to her desk chair and shocked her behind. She still giggled in outrage about it. She lived with "the girls" in a boarding house in Twin, all of whom became lifelong friends. Mother says she was in her 20s when she first saw "the Ruffing boy". She was up the Albee windmill (he worked for the Albee family at the time) reading a book and saw him in the distance. She liked to climb, she liked to be outside, she liked to read, and apparently she also liked what she saw from a distance. Those things never changed. We took her hiking to Titus lake near Galena summit at the age of 87. And she made it. "The Ruffing boy" was also very independent. He left Nebraska during the depression just before the family lost the farm. There was a family of at least 10 children and he said there was nothing to eat. He came to Idaho with a combine crew and slept in a boxcar in the railyard in Buhl. He found work on local farms, and later as a carpenter helped construct the Sun Valley Lodge. Then he got a USDA job, and stayed with it. A couple of stories: The love of gardening never left. She always had a garden, both flower and vegetable. She moved the geraniums daddy kept from the lab greenhouses with her to Tulsa; the stock has been alive in their care for over 50 years. We toured botanic gardens all over the country. She loved to go to Rich and Ami's farm. Mother was a pretty good shot. She talked about shooting chickens with a pistol. I just recently found her pistol in the luggage bag she took everywhere, including trips to Idaho and Illinois, and put it away. I mentioned once about interstate transport and permits and she said "you're telling me I need to ask somebody if I can carry a gun?" She and Bud married when she was 32 at the Little Church of the Flowers in Los Angeles, and moved into their home in Twin Falls, and never moved out. I was born about a year later, and Rich 3 1/2 years after me. To say that a German who married a Scots-Irish woman, both for the first time and later in life, and each with strong opinions, had a smooth married life would be a vast misstatement of the facts. Tumultuous would be generous. However, they held it together through good and bad, and I think after daddy retired, and Rich and I were doing well and were stable, and there was more money, that they became better friends, and more loving and happier than ever before as a couple. Daddy managed the farm, and they had two rental properties and continued to enjoy the cabin. They traveled extensively with travelling buddies Bob and Marge Houston. I think their finest project together was the cabin they built with family and friends in the Sawtooths. They loved the mountains, hiking, and being outside, but daddy wanted a bathroom, not a tent. I know my best memories growing up are there. I remember peeling logs with my grandmother and my mother pounding 16 inch spikes between logs with a sledgehammer. Donald was there, as well as Iva and Mac, almost every weekend between snow seasons. Her last trip to the cabin from Tulsa was last year, at 97. Let me tell a couple more classic Mayme stories. Chip and I took her with us to the cabin the summer after daddy died, and we were cutting wood with the chainsaw, in pretty good sized pieces to chop for the woodstove. She came down the hill carrying a big armload of 3 logs. When she got close enough she complained they were too heavy. I said she could just carry one at a time, so she put one out of three down, and kicked it the rest of the way, carrying the other two. Age 86? Another concerns her neighbor Jackie Johnson, who is a nurse. Mother called me and said she'd found her glasses. I said I didn't know she'd lost them and she said, "oh… I must have told Richard." I asked where, she said under the kitchen table. I asked how they got there, she said she had "a spell." I said what does that mean, she said she fainted and when she woke up she crawled to the phone and called Jackie. Jackie came down and told her she needed to go to the hospital, and mother said no, she'd be fine. I asked what Jackie did then and mother said she went straight to the phone and called the ambulance. I asked what happened then and she said the doctor put in a pacemaker. Jackie apparently discovered the "spell" meant heart block with a rate of 40. At one point the house in Twin developed a ruptured main water line. Chip, being from Oklahoma, and therefore knowing about drilling, drove to Idaho, rented a small horizontal driller, and proceeded to drill in the new water line. He went in the crawl space to see if he had come into the house, and when he was leaving, as he turned around he was startled to find mother in the crawlspace right behind him (age 88). Can I help pull the pipe? I was always worried about mother falling and breaking a hip. On one of our cabin trips, because it was being invaded by carpenter ants, we decided to spray. Chip locked the back door and told her what he was doing, took the boards off the back porch frame and sprayed. He went to get more spray and I turned the corner just in time to see her unlock the door "her keys", step out, and fall three feet into thin air. Her only question was "Who locked the back door?" She injured nothing. Remarkable woman. After daddy died traumatically, her life changed forever. She continued in the house in twin as most of you know, getting up early to turn on the lawn sprinklers, weeding, gardening, and she kept his pajamas under the other pillow. Using tea as a social lubricant, and talk as the engine of healing and survival, many of you in this room helped her recover and continue to live in her house, where she was most comfortable, for many years--surrounded by good memories. Jackie Johnson, Sharon Post, Marge Houston and so many Buhl relatives and friends of a lifetime. Mother was a smart woman, and a stylish woman, knew fabrics, and liked good clothes. She was "the hat lady." always just so. She refused to move until November of 2013 when she realized she could no longer balance her checkbook, called me and we went and loaded her up and brought her to Tulsa, racing a major cold front. She lived there with us, at first reluctantly, and later gratefully, I think. She helped paint the kitchen of one of the houses we restored, and helped lay tile in another; so the can-do, do-it-yourself spirit never lagged. She swept the kitchen floor every day. She liked the flea market. Filled with memories triggered by things. I bought her a tatting shuttle there once and in the back seat on the way home she had tatted from memory a tiny piece of work from the string that had been left on the bobbin. We took her by car to visit Rich this spring for several weeks, which she really enjoyed--9 hours by car each way. She got to see all the grandkids once again. She spent most days this year making her own breakfast and lunch, snoozing in the sunny window in her bedroom, playing with our cats, watering the plants, calling her friends and reading Zane Gray. She is survived by Rich, his wife Ami, Chip and I, and four beloved grandchildren: Her only granddaughter, Hilary, who is here today, and three grandsons, Andrew, Travis and Grant, and all the rest of us. That's how you get to be 99—independence, self-reliance, hard work, but also interdependence, teamwork, and above all, love—family, friends, and neighbors. That's the rest of the story. John and Richard Ruffing Mayme Louise McNelly (Hart) Ruffing November 2, 1917 to September 28 2016 Mother was born and raised on a farm in Northview, near Buhl, the first child of Iva and Charles E "Mac" McNelly, both of St. Paul, Minnesota, on November 2nd, 1917. A bright, curious, voracious reader and self-described tomboy as a child, she loved the farm, her horse, her brothers and sister, heights, and the outdoors. After high school, she went on to business school in Twin, and became a bookkeeper and stenographer. She met Bernard John (Bud) Ruffing, who came to Buhl seeking work during the depression, in her mid 20s--but, never fond of snap decisions, married him several years later, in 1949, in the Little Church of the Flowers, in Glendale, California. After marriage, they bought a home in Twin and she continued to work until near term with her first child; and thereafter changed jobs to full-time mom, raising two sons, John and Richard. Although it could not be said that mother (ever) suffered in silence, she had a good marriage, punctuated by brief moments of "frank negotiations," as is said at the U.N. She and Bud became very involved in PTA, the scouting programs, and Twin's First Presbyterian Church. They spent most summer weekends at a cabin near galena summit, which they built by hand, with family and friends. It was the best of times. Rather than the marriage fall apart after the children went to college and Bud retired, Mayme's life with Bud seemed to enter a time of peace and contentment with lots of travel with friends Bob and Marge Houston all over the West. They were able to visit family in the Midwest, and travelled with John on the east coast. Mother especially loved Boston, because of ancient family ties to the area. She was chatty, gregarious and outgoing, "never met a stranger," and always was about family and friends. They both continued to find great beauty outdoors. That era with Bud ended abruptly with his death in a tragic car crash which nearly killed her as well. She had a slow recovery. Using tea as a social lubricant and talk as the engine of healing, and aided by so many neighbors, friends and family they could easily be called a community, she got better and continued to live in her home in Twin for many years. She finally consented to winters in Tulsa, and remained in remarkable health until she died in her sleep in John's home in Tulsa, one month and four days short of age 99, on September 28th, 2016. Because we were able to trace mother's family to members with documented support of the revolutionary war (on both sides of her family), she was able to become a Daughter of the American Revolution, Terry Patterson for Ft. Boise Sons of American Revolution and Colleen Florke for Homestead Twin Falls Daughters American Revolution Chapter. She considered herself a proud American, and a patriot, and was pleased to be a member. She was preceded in death by her parents and brothers Eugene and Donald and sister Edith and grandson Ian. She is survived by her son Dr. John Ruffing and his husband Chip Atkins of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and her son Richard Ruffing, his wife Ami and their children--Mayme's beloved grandchildren-- Andrew, Travis, Hilary and Grant, all living near Du Quoin, Illinois; nieces Linda Bigley and Karen Kinney and their families. Services will be held at Buhl Presbyterian Church October 11th at 11 am, followed by a brief graveside service. There will be a "chat and chew" meal at the church following the services, to which all are cordially invited. Mother requested that in lieu of flowers, donations might be sent to Idaho Youth Ranch, or The Nature Conservancy, of which she was a member.