Ruth teaching grade school in 1957. Her students remembered her as stern, but fair.
Ruth Hunt always played a major role in our family's summertime visits to West Virginia - we always stayed at her house, and she often accompanied us on our daytrips while we stayed there. She was the big sister to Mom - but more like a grandmother to us kids. She had her quirks and eccentricities but we all remember her fondly.
Ruth, the eldest child of Georgia and Ernest Hunt, had a lifelong career as a teacher. I can't say that "lifelong" was entirely her choice. Back in those days, a female teacher's contract often stipulated that she remain single. As soon as she married, she was out of a job. (I wonder if that also applied to male teachers - if any existed back then!) So when her father tragically died in 1934, Ruth, who was then in her early 20's, suddenly had a mother and 6 younger siblings, including a baby sister, who needed her financial help. That meant she had to keep teaching for a long, long time, and stay single too - or else.
Years later, after the chidren had grown up and left the farm, Ruth remained in Burton to take care of her mother. She seemed fated for spinsterhood.
But then . . . .
Ruth teaching grade school in 1957. Her students remembered her as stern, but
fair.
. . . by the time she reached her early 50's, her mother had passed away and society's attitudes towards married teachers had changed. And so Ruth married Ira Ice, an older, retired businessman, and a one-time mayor of Mannington, West Virginia. They lived happily for about a decade, until Ira, who was a two pack a day smoker, died from emphysema in the early 1970's.
Ruth, around the time she married Ira
Ira Ice, happily living in Burton with Ruth. I remember Ruth telling me how
Ira had such a handsome, chiseled look to his face. She thought New York governor
Mario Cuomo had a good face too!
The lady in red is Ira's daughter Betty, posing with her daughter Susan. Dig
that groovy hair.
The caption on back reads "Ever watch (illegible) and laugh and cry at
the same time?"
(date unknown)
Ira owned a grocery store in the Mannington, WV area. He stands to the right
in this publicity postcard.
The caption reads "Ice's Super Market - East Main St., Mannington, W. VA.
- Free Parking".
Ruth in the 1970's, around the time she was widowed.
She continued teaching until 1980 or so.
Ruth never had children, but she did have Missy, her "baby."
Missy, Ruth and some cat.
There was usually a cat somewhere, but there was only one Missy!
The month following the terrorist attacks of 9/11,
Ruth passed away suddenly, but peacefully, in her home - just as her mother
had done in the same house forty years earlier.
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