RUTH MAY WOOD

Ruth Wood, adopted daughter of William and Elizabeth Dickey, was born Ruth May Fettkether on January 15, 1906. She was adopted by the Dickey family on October 5, 1906. She grew up and was educated in Rolfe schools. She was united in marriage to Bloy Wood on June 1, 1928 at the Little Brown Church in Nashua. The couple made their home in Rolfe, later moving to Chicago where they lived for 11 years. Mr. Wood was employed in factory work and Ruth worked in a department store. In 1943, the couple began farming near Gilmore City and continued to farm until their retirement in 1968. In 1968, they moved to Humboldt. Ruth was a member of the Oak Hill Baptist Church in Humboldt, as well as a member of Order of Eastern Star (Lodge No. 195 A.F. and A.M.) in Humboldt. The couple spent 64 happy years together until Bloy passed away on December 3, 1992. In 2000, Ruth moved in with her granddaughter Linda, and grandson-in-law Sham Zamtersong. In 2002, she even travelled to China and spent a year with them in the city of Chengdu, provincial capitol of Sichuan Province. They returned to the U.S. in the autumn of 2003. Ruth was an amazing goodwill ambassador and was loved by all the people she met there. She lived at home with her family until she was rushed to Overlake Hospital (Bellevue, Washington), the morning of May 4, 2007. She passed away the afternoon of May 4, 2007 due to complications from a massive heart attack.

Ruth is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Barbara and Norman Visner of Issaquah, Washington, and her granddaughter and grandson-in-law, Linda Visner and Sham Zamtersong, also of Issaquah. She was preceded in death by her husband, Bloy Wood.

To honor her wishes and memory, Ruth will be laid to rest with her husband Bloy in the Clinton-Garfield Cemetery, Rolfe, Iowa. Because of the distance and difficulties of travel, a date has yet to be determined. Friends and family are invited to view a memorial to Ruth Wood's life and share their memories of her at www.flintofts.com. As soon as details for her funeral service and burial do become available, they will be published here online, and also in the Fort Dodge Messenger, the Humboldt Independent, and the Pocahontas Record - Democrat.

THANK YOU for visiting this website in honor of Ruth May Wood, a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother.

At 101 years old, Grandma saw many changes not just in her own life, but in the history of this country and also the world. We have put together a short story about her life from our many talks with her and memories she shared with us, and from a look at the history books! We hope that all of her friends and family will treasure these memories as much as we do. If any of you have memories of your own, we would love it if you shared them with us online. Your stories and memories of her will be welcomed and treasured.

I was born in January, 1906 and grew up in Pocahontas County, Iowa, in a little farming town called Rolfe. Just a few years before my birth, in 1903, the Wright brothers had been pioneering manned flight. The Civil War had come to an end only 40 years before that in 1865. So I grew up with people who remembered and had the scars from fighting in that war. In 1906 when I was born, scientist Lewis Nixon pioneered sonar, Picasso was inventing his style of cubism – and (a little closer to home!) Mr. Kellogg invented and began to market the cornflake.

I did not have an easy start in life. Both my parents died when I was a baby. I was lucky I did not have to go into an orphanage. I had a married older sister who took me in. Here I am as a child playing with some puppies. We lived in town, but town then was different to town now! Kids today don't like to be out of fashion – and kids yesterday didn't either! I remember being shy when we went to visit some relatives, because our family still used a horse and buckboard, lots of other families were driving those popular new Model T's Henry Ford was beginning to turn out. We washed our clothes on a washboard, and we cooked on old-fashioned stoves often using corn cobs for fuel. I hated that because they burned so fast that you were forever feeding the fire and running to dump out the ashes. Threshers came to town with their threshing machines every autumn to help with the harvest. Whenever I saw a large amount of food – I always said '' You look like you're cooking for threshers'' – because I really did!

This is me after I graduated from high school. I was still living in Rolfe, and I got a job at the local drug store, working as a sales girl and at the store's soda fountain. It was the 'Roaring Twenties'. World War I had ended just as I was entering my teens, and you can see from my haircut that the 'flapper girl' fashion was going strong. Prohibition was still in force then. Al Capone was at large and the newspapers were full of stories about his gang. Motion pictures were entertainments you went to the city to see. Since we lived in such a small town, the big event for our youth were the dances and roller skating held on weekends at Lizard Lake. Live bands played music – and I loved to dance. I had a date to every dance…but I didn't always leave with the same man who brought me!

All that changed just before 1928. While I was working at the drugstore, I met a man named Bloy Wood who was from Rolfe, too. He had come home to Rolfe after serving in the army post office in Europe during and after World War I, and when he asked me to the dance – I didn't leave him behind! We were married on June 1, 1928 at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua. I wore a beautiful yellow silk wedding dress.

Right after we were married, the Great Depression hit America in 1929. Because of the situation, just a few years after we married we had to move. My husband had a married sister in Chicago. We found an apartment just outside Chicago. Bloy got a job in a battery factory and I was lucky to find another job in a department store. We lived and worked there for 11 years. Our dream and goal was to get our own farm. I loved to sew, and while we were in Chicago I did buy myself one of the newfangled sewing machines I kept my whole life. But mostly we skimped and saved every dime until we had the money to buy our own farm.

It's now 1943. In Britain, in 1943 the world's first programmable computer had been built, it was a 1,500 valve electrical machine called ''Colossus'' that was used to translate messages in the war. World War II had started in 1939, and I remember having to ration and be very careful in the way I managed our home and farm.

1943 was special to us because it was the year all our hard work in Chicago paid off – we bought our own farm. We moved back to Rolfe where most of our families were, and got started on our own farm. We built the house and the buildings by ourselves, and we were very busy there. We grew corn and later on we grew soybeans, too. I helped my husband with farming, and did all the canning and preserving of vegetables in our gardens. Sewing and needlework were some of my proudest accomplishments. I sewed my own clothes and my husband's suits. I made a beautiful lace tablecloth that is now a family treasure. There is a story behind it. I'd been working on it so long my husband teased me. He made a bet that he'd pay me twenty dollars if I could finish it in two weeks. I made my twenty and he learned not to dare me again unless he wanted to lose! I made art with my lace and incorporated American history in many beautiful homemade quilts my family cherishes.

Nothing was wasted during that time. Those are habits I kept a lifetime. I got cancer during that time, too and had to have a hysterectomy – it was a lot more risky then than it is now. If you know someone who has cancer – you can tell them about me to encourage them - I was a cancer survivor who lived to 101!

The year is 1951. Zenith introduced its television prototype and they were going strong. Chrysler cars had come out with power steering, and Charles Schultz had just launched the new comic strip 'Peanuts'. The U.S. was beginning to reach out to space, and had its first successful live launch when 4 monkeys journeyed to the stratosphere. My husband and I had a successful farm, but we didn’t have our own family. We wanted children, and so we adopted our only daughter Barbara when she was 10 years old. We didn't know it then, but someday that decision would send me on a journey halfway around the world.

It's now 1965. Civil Rights hero Martin Luther King had already made his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech in 1963, and went on to win worldwide accolades in 1964, honored with the with Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. troops were being deployed in Vietnam. In 1968, my husband and I retired from farming. We kept our farmland and rented it to our longtime friends and neighbors the Gardewines, and we moved to the nearby town of Humboldt, Iowa, to this house. A year later, in 1969, Neil Armstrong would make his famous walk on the moon and open a new frontier.

In 1979, another change came to my life. A few years previously, when we were visiting my daughter Barbara and her family, my husband and I had a conversation with their Baptist pastor. He talked about faith and belief. We had been churchgoers all our lives but one thing he said stuck with us – he said going to church doesn't make someone a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car. He said Christianity is not about how good you are in life, but about what God did for you when He sent His Son to die for our sins. Mostly he said faith is about a relationship with God, that He loves us, but that it's like a marriage. You can't just go and sit someplace – you need to say 'I do' and give God the control in your life. That conversation stuck with us, and when we were in our 80s we decided to make it public by saying that to God and then becoming baptised as a public demonstration of our newfound faith. I remember the whole church laughed with us when my husband was baptised because he said (loud enough for everyone to hear!) 'Don't be careful with me just because I'm old – dunk me right down to the bottom!'

You can see from these pictures we are growing older together. My granddaughter likes to say we were eyes and ears for each other. I had been very hard of hearing even when I was much younger. As we grew older my husband's eyesight failed. He was the one who was sharpest to hear, and when he could no longer see I read the Bible he so loved to him every day. One of the greatest gifts we gave to our family was our love and faithfulness to each other – we showed them what love and commitment means.

1992 was the saddest year of my life. After an illness of about 6 months, my husband Bloy passed away. It was very hard to say goodbye to my best friend and my love of 64 years. It was hard to adjust to life as a widow. My faith in Jesus is a great comfort to my family now, to know that after all the years of separation and missing him so much, Bloy and I are now together in His presence. I was very independent, and I took care of and lived on in my home for seven years after Bloy passed away. I thought the big changes in my life were over, but I was about to be proven wrong.

My granddaughter Linda had been living and working as a linguist and teacher overseas. She met and married my son-in-law Andrew, who is from Tibet, while overseas. We wrote regularly to each other, but I didn't get to know my new son-in-law until she came back to the U.S. with him. They were living in their own home in Minnesota and I was still in Iowa. I was beginning to slow down a little by then.

Andrew is from Tibet. In his country there are no nursing homes – the elderly are always taken care of by their children or relatives. So once when he and Linda were returning from visiting me in Iowa, he said 'Why doesn't Grandma just come and live with us?' I had been very independent before, but when they asked me in 2000, this time I said yes and moved in with the newlyweds. We've been together ever since.

I was already in my 90s and I had slowed down some, but I still kept busy! I liked helping Linda in the kitchen, and she enjoyed learning all the recipes from me that she enjoyed as a child. Except for my years working in Chicago, I had never travelled far from home. Soon I was meeting their friends and some of Linda's students from around the world. I met new friends from Tibet, China, Korea, Nigeria and Mexico the first year I stayed with them. I enjoy children very much – this is me playing with some of the children our first Christmas together. My whole life I had been afraid of flying and airplanes but the kids talked me into boarding one and I found out flying was fine! I made my first trip to Arizona to visit my daughter and son-in-law – here is me on my first airplane trip at age 93!

In 2002 we made another big change in our lives. Linda does linguistic research on Asian languages and Andrew likes to work in community development. They had returned to the U.S. for a time when they were married, but always with the goal of returning to Tibet-China. In 2002, they were ready to return. I had known their goals and supported them, but I was now living with them. When they told me they wanted to return and asked me what I thought about maybe returning to Asia with them, I said 'You are my family – I want to go with you'. So at the ripe old age of 96 I changed my status once again from 'retired' to 'retired world traveler!'

The kids worried about me and how I would make the adjustment to living somewhere so different. They shouldn't have worried. I surprised everyone. I could only say 'hello' in Chinese and Tibetan but smiles, hugs and even tears are a universal language. My son-in-law's relatives are Tibetan nomads. They live in very far-flung communities. Most had never met a foreigner before. They came to the city of Chengdu in Sichuan where we were living to meet us. I found all kinds of ways to communicate in spite of the language barrier. I could not speak but I could smile. When I saw one of Linda's friends crying because her brother had died, I couldn’t speak her language, but I could understand her tears and I reached out to hug and hold the girl. I played 'cat's cradle', a game I had played as a child - with my son-in-law's nieces when they came to visit.

Far from being a burden – I became one of their greatest assets and the best ambassador they could have wished for. Both traditional Tibetan and Chinese culture place a great emphasis on respect for elders and caring for parents. Officials in the southwest of China, where we were living, can be a little suspicious of foreigners. I was their best goodwill ambassador ever! I charmed school officials, and city and provincial government officials alike. Wherever I went with them, we were given instant VIP status and moved to the head of the line because of my age. People continually stopped us on the street to ask how old I was, and smiled just to see me. I was always ready to shake hands or give someone a hug. I enjoyed Asia, and I made a lot of new friends there, too.

We had to return to the U.S. in 2003 when Linda's father became very ill. The last two years of my life I did slow down considerably. However I could still walk with the aid of a walker. My short term memory could get a little shaky sometimes but right up to when I passed away I loved to tease and have fun, and continued to give the kids good advice they treasure. The kids got a puppy for me for my 99th birthday, and we were buddies! We had a special birthday party for my 100th birthday, it included my being seen on NBC's TODAY show and receiving cards from Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H. and George W. Bush. I was honored!

Sometime during the night on May 3rd, I suffered a massive heart attack. It happened at home, and I was rushed to the emergency room. I went to be with Jesus on May 4, 2007.

Especially during the last few years, we realized that every day with Grandma was a gift. She gave us so many wonderful memories, and some amazing surprises, too. Like her biblical namesake, she was literally willing to go to the 'ends of the earth' to stay with family. She taught us lessons about love and loyalty as a wife and to family that we will never ever forget. We would welcome and value your sharing your memories of her, as we remember her life and rejoice with her that she has indeed left the land of Shadows and is now walking in light with the Lord, and with Bloy who she loved so much.