Ruby McAndrew

Ruby McAndrew passed away on January 31, 2007 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. She was born Ruby Ethel Bowers on April 19, 1903 in Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, near present-day Wilburton, Oklahoma, probably in the small community of Bowers, which was named after her father, John DeWitt Bowers. Her mother was Tilitha ("Letha") Anderson. Ruby and her family moved to the mining community of Walker in the Bradshaw Mountains near Prescott, Arizona at the end of 1904, where her father worked as a machinist in the mines. (The boulder on which the statue of Bucky O'Neill sits in front of the Prescott Courthouse was dragged into town by her father's team of horses.) In 1907, her family moved to Phoenix, ultimately homesteading in Scottsdale in 1910 at the corner of present-day Pima Road and Via de Ventura. She and her family moved back to Phoenix before 1918 in connection with her father's work with the Verde River Irrigation and Power District. Ruby attended a one-room schoolhouse at the corner of Scottsdale and Indian Bend Roads, also Garfield and Monroe schools in Phoenix, and graduated from Phoenix Union High School in 1921. She worked for a private investigator for a time, and on August 3, 1929, she married Robert Clair McAndrew. She was very active in the Red Cross during WWII. She was a convert to Catholicism and through her church became deeply involved in the Children's Indian Hospital in Phoenix, serving as a volunteer for over 25 years. In 1973, following Mac's retirement, they moved back to Prescott, where Mac died in 1982. Ruby and Mac had no children. Ruby spent her remaining years in Prescott doting on her grand and great nieces and nephews. She was the keeper of the family memories, many of which became the subject of memoirs and poems, which she loved to recount to the children. Even at age 103, her memory for detail was extraordinary. She loved her family and made sure they were all aware of their family history. Ruby was preceded in death by her sisters and brothers: Pearl Johnston (1963), J. D. Bowers (1964), Fred Bowers (1981), Edna Bartlett (1982), and Mildred Carney (2000). She also had a brother, Polk, who died during the family's move from Crown King to Phoenix in 1907, and a sister, Jewel, who died as an infant in 1916. Her remains will be interred at the Camelback Cemetery on McDonald Drive in Scottsdale, in the family plot where her parents and husband are buried.