Ruth Loos

The Ruthie we knew....

Above all, Ruth was a mom to her two children, a wife, and eventually a long term caretaker to her husband, Howard. Being more talkative than her husband, she was the one who expressed to her children the importance of right vs wrong, fairness, and justice; and in other ways she was the one who influenced her children. And it stuck. It was expressed not through lectures, but more through everyday thoughts. An always present stream of thinking-out-loud thoughts; but also through handling the kids and running the household. Those thoughts came out in shopping, cooking, inside-and-outside house work, bills, episcopal church, family holidays, non-essentials that they had bought. And the non-essentials that they didn't buy. And the very occasional discipline. Also influencing the kids.... There was news available; Ruth and Howard got newspapers and magazines like Newsweek. There was the 30 minutes of nightly national news. During Vietnam, Watergate and the Generation Gap, the country was said to be coming apart at the seams. Ruth and Howard were sad, disappointed, even fearful, but no outrage, no finger-pointing, no blaming groups of people. There was no discussions/influence about 'types' of people, or political systems, or governmental influence.

Growing up in Chicago in the 1930s and 40s.... I believe she and her sister Phyllis would visit the 2 grandmothers, Rosa and Rosa (sic) in south Chicago. I believe one of the grandmothers owned and ran a boarding house. Ruth knew about poverty in that time; the American Great Depression. She must have seen it at her grandmothers, and she saw it in the neighborhood, her street, the front door. Men would come to the door asking for food, work or a place to stay. In school, she would go to school on public buses with her friend who didn't have a place to wash up in the morning, and that bothered her.

She lived a few blocks from Lake Michigan. She would later tell people the importance of learning to swim. Also a few blocks away was her Episcopal church where her parents Naomi and Charles were active in the church. Her dad, a church elder, and mom, a magician in that she was not just a great cook out of her very small kitchen. But she was also a high quantity cook on more than a few occasions when there was a need for a church function. Ruth knew a lot about the church.

Toward the end of WWII she and her family were very fearful that her sister Phyllis' husband, Chuck, would be killed in the Pacific war. He was in the Navy. He survived....

After college she worked in, and loved, downtown Chicago. She worked on State street in a bank, and was excited to be there, downtown. Around the beginning(?) of 1953 she met her love, Howard, via Phyllis and Chuck. Chuck had been an LST (a landing ship) captain. Phyllis and Chuck introduced them. Howard was also a landing ship officer who fought in the Pacific. He was on an LSM; again a landing ship. It was a tin can; very little structure to it. The ship left a training ground in Virginia, sailed through the Panama Canal and crossed the vast Pacific on their way to the Philippines using... a... *compass*. And a sextant, and, I assume, several clocks and some maps that mostly just showed nothing but ocean. Or maybe they carried no maps for the middle of the ocean? A hurricane at sea, combat landings, bullets flying, and Kamikazies in the air. He too survived....

They married in Chicago and in a couple of years they had their first house, in a Chicago suburb. They had a baby and then another one; Karen and Michael. Their lives then became all about providing for their children. Holidays were Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. We got together with Phyllis, Chuck, and their children, Marilee, Elizabeth, Paul and Nancy. Plus Ruth's aunt Grace, cousins Grace and Florence (Skokie); and Ruth's parents who still lived in Chicago. Occasionally we would see Ruth's uncle Sam and his wife Natalie (Chicago). A couple of times two of Howard's nieces flew in from Washington DC, and other times Howard's father, Karl, or aunt came to visit. We met Uncle Sam and Natalie in Florida; one of two or three train trips to Florida. And we met Karl in Colorado once for a week's vacation near Pike's Peak via a train trip.

After Ruth's children left home, she and Howard lived just outside of Washington D.C. for 2 years while he worked at Amtrak. She loved seeing the museums and sights in the area.

Around 1980, they wound up in Dunedin and then Clearwater Florida. At one point, she would ride a bike around her Clearwater neighborhood. She played leisurely golf with a friend and neighbor for years. Later they moved to a house in Palm Harbor in a development with a community pool among other things. For years Ruth would swim laps; she became able to swim for a whole hour.

It wasn't but a few years before Howard was debilitated by a rare neurological disease. She took care of him and took him to endless doctor appointments. After more than 5 years, he stabilized and improved a bit.

In 2001, they moved into a senior independent living facility. They ate dinners with the others and found friends and many acquaintances. They fit in well and there were occasional activities. Mom shopped and cooked breakfast and lunch. There were errands and doctor appointments.

They celebrated their 40th anniversary on a cruise, and then their 50th anniversary.

Over the years, they were grateful for the visits from the DeLand/Blodgett clan. Marilee, Brian, Elizabeth, Jon, Nancy, Rick, Jessica, Gary, Brenna, Paul, Sylvie, Will, Ariel, Josh, Magnolia, Lucy, and Rebecca. Also, Dickson and Bea Loos.