Press enter after choosing selection

Legacies Project Oral History: Ruth Carey

When: 2020

Ruth (née Dorsey) Carey was born in 1937 and grew up in West Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio. She attended Greenbelt College in Illinois and nursing school in Cleveland, Ohio. She and her husband had two children and moved to Ann Arbor to pursue graduate education. She graduated from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and went on to teach at the School of Nursing. She is passionate about educating new parents about health and nutrition. During retirement she began visiting inmates at the federal prison in Milan as a volunteer with the Prisoner Visitation & Support program.

Ruth Carey was interviewed by students from Skyline High School in Ann Arbor in 2015-16 as part of the Legacies Project.

Transcript

  • [00:00:09.35] SPEAKER 1: Ring a lot, so we'll have a little warning, and then we can take a break.
  • [00:00:12.59] RUTH CAREY: OK.
  • [00:00:13.72] SPEAKER 1: OK. So first, we'll start off with-- so can you please say your name?
  • [00:00:19.53] RUTH CAREY: Ruth Carey.
  • [00:00:20.22] SPEAKER 1: Ruth Carey. And what was your-- when's your birthday, and how old are you?
  • [00:00:25.85] RUTH CAREY: March 28, 1937. I'm 78 years old.
  • [00:00:30.79] SPEAKER 1: You don't look 78 at all. How would you describe your ethnic background?
  • [00:00:36.59] RUTH CAREY: Caucasian, and probably Irish and English ancestry.
  • [00:00:42.65] SPEAKER 1: What is your religious affiliation if any?
  • [00:00:46.43] RUTH CAREY: Quakerism or Friends. I don't know if you know Quakerism or Friends meetings, but it's a sect of Christianity, although it's very inclusive. We have a lot of people that are not Christians but are Quakers.
  • [00:00:59.81] SPEAKER 1: What is the highest level of formal education you've completed, and did you attend any additional school or formal career training beyond what you completed?
  • [00:01:08.36] RUTH CAREY: My highest degree is a master's in public health degree. And I didn't go for more formal education after that.
  • [00:01:17.40] SPEAKER 1: What is your marital status?
  • [00:01:19.41] RUTH CAREY: I'm married.
  • [00:01:21.03] SPEAKER 1: How many children do you have?
  • [00:01:22.24] RUTH CAREY: Two.
  • [00:01:23.25] SPEAKER 1: And how many siblings do you have?
  • [00:01:25.23] RUTH CAREY: Four.
  • [00:01:28.59] SPEAKER 1: Do you know any stories about your family name?
  • [00:01:32.54] RUTH CAREY: Yes. There's one very interesting story, but it's kind of long, so I don't know if you want it right now.
  • [00:01:38.57] SPEAKER 1: You can go ahead and tell it.
  • [00:01:39.80] RUTH CAREY: Well, my maiden name is Dorsey. And there are people in our family that know about ancestry and doing DNA and see what your DNA matches. Well, none of my grandfathers nor any of us since then does our DNA match the DNA of that name. So we don't really know what happened. But it was during the Civil War that he was born, and we think maybe he was an orphan from the war and a family took him in. That's the only way we know to understand how that happened. But we kept the name anyway.
  • [00:02:13.24] SPEAKER 1: Wow. That's really interesting. So are there any naming traditions in your family?
  • [00:02:19.52] RUTH CAREY: No.
  • [00:02:19.88] SPEAKER 1: No? So this next one's about family migration from way back then. So do you know why your ancestors left to come to the United States?
  • [00:02:30.09] RUTH CAREY: I don't know why. I know when the first Dorsey immigrant came was 1625 from England. But the information was that the ancestry was from Ireland.
  • [00:02:43.59] SPEAKER 1: How did they make a living, either there or in the United States?
  • [00:02:47.01] RUTH CAREY: That's a good question. I don't really know. What I know as far back as I do know is they were farmers.
  • [00:02:53.57] SPEAKER 1: Oh. So what possessions did they bring with them? Do you know any details about that?
  • [00:02:59.39] RUTH CAREY: I have no idea.
  • [00:03:00.27] SPEAKER 1: OK, yeah. So to your knowledge, did they make an effort to preserve any traditions or customs from their country of origin, so Ireland?
  • [00:03:08.95] RUTH CAREY: I'm not aware of that.
  • [00:03:12.43] SPEAKER 1: So what stories have come down to you about your parents and grandparents or any distant ancestors? Do you have any stories?
  • [00:03:19.89] RUTH CAREY: There are stories. My family-- the first Dorsey arrived in Virginia, then moved up into New England. But a lot of the family stayed in the Virginia area. And then, Virginia divided into West Virginia and Virginia during the Civil War. West Virginia was on the north. Virginia was on the south. And so my ancestors that I know about, which went back to great grandfathers, was in West Virginia. And it was in the hills there, farming. Difficult kind of farming on the sides of hills and all that kind of thing.
  • [00:04:00.10] But there were also-- there's one really funny story about my grandfather who had gone over to a neighbor who had just butchered and had bought a piece of the cow and was bringing it home on his back. And he was followed by a panther.
  • [00:04:14.68] SPEAKER 1: A panther?
  • [00:04:15.38] RUTH CAREY: A panther, which was common in the hills there. And the panther was much more interested in the part of the cow than he was in the minister. And so he had a dog with him, but it was just a little dog. And the dog ran home and hid under the bed. So when my great grandfather got home, that's where the dog was. He was no help at all. But he did get home with the meat. But I just think that's a-- it tells something about locale they were in, but also how they were getting food.
  • [00:04:44.90] SPEAKER 1: And like a panther-- you would never see it as, like, a panther, right?
  • [00:04:48.43] RUTH CAREY: Right.
  • [00:04:49.17] SPEAKER 1: That's really interesting. Do you know any courtship stories, like about how your parents or grandparents or any of your other relatives came to meet and get married?
  • [00:04:58.53] RUTH CAREY: I know how my parents met. I don't know further back from that. My mother's father and my father's father knew each other in West Virginia, and they were pretty good friends. But my father's family moved to Ohio because my grandmother did not want her boys working in the coal mines. She had a brother that'd been crippled and all that. So when my dad had grown up and was a young man, his brother still lived in West Virginia. And so he decided that he should introduce my dad to my mother.
  • [00:05:31.65] Well, it was a hot summer day, and my mom and her sister would often take their cots outside and sleep because it was cooler. Well, they had already gone to bed when my uncle brought my dad down to meet her. And he came in anyway and said, Charles, is this Doris. Doris, this is Charles. And so Charles is shaking my mom's hand, and she said he wouldn't let go. And their cots are right beside the creek. And finally, she jerked her hand away, and he fell in the creek. So the story always was that my dad fell for my mother.
  • [00:06:04.74] SPEAKER 1: Oh, my God. That is so cute. That's such a funny story too. So this next part is about your earliest memories in childhood and stuff. So where did you grow up, and what are your strongest memories of the place?
  • [00:06:22.26] RUTH CAREY: We moved a lot when I was little because my parents didn't have any money, so they lived with his mother for quite a while. And then they moved to another place where my brother and I were born. And then they moved began when we were about three and four. And so there were a lot of moves when we were just little kids.
  • [00:06:46.77] And then, when I was about five, we moved about 100 miles away to a farm that my dad rented. And that's the place I remember most because I was old enough to remember. But I remember the layout of the house. I remember where my bedroom was. I remember we had a side porch on the house. And I also remember helping on the farm. And my brother and I would go to get the cattle in the evening to bring them in, because we had dairy cows, and they had to be milked.
  • [00:07:14.22] Well, it was really rainy one time when we went, and my brother got stuck in the mud, and he couldn't get his feet out of his boots. So I had to run home and get my mom and mom, Vin's stuck in the mud. So that's kind of a sharp memory for me because I could help him. My mom was home and I could go get her. So I just-- and I remember-- oh, we had a major fire at that place, and two barns burned down. And I remember being in the yard, and the paint on the house-- it was so hot that the paint peeled a little bit. But it didn't burn. Fire trucks came and--
  • [00:07:51.81] SPEAKER 1: Oh my God.
  • [00:07:52.44] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. So I remember all that.
  • [00:07:54.22] SPEAKER 1: So can you describe your house or the barn a little more? Can you give us some details about what it looked like?
  • [00:07:59.22] RUTH CAREY: Well, the house was like probably a three-bedroom, two-story house. Not anything glamorous at all, but it had a nice yard. And the barns were close by, just on the other side of the yard. And one was a horse barn, which we had a horse. Actually, I think dad may have had a team of horses, because he didn't have a tractor. And then there was the hay barn, which was a different building. And then there was the dairy barn where we milked the cows. So there was quite a cluster of buildings. And then the woman who we rented from lived on the next-- not very far from where we were.
  • [00:08:36.33] SPEAKER 1: So what languages were spoken and your h--
  • [00:08:40.35] RUTH CAREY: Only English.
  • [00:08:40.68] SPEAKER 1: Only English. And were there any different languages spoken around you or anything?
  • [00:08:44.79] RUTH CAREY: Not that I was ever aware of.
  • [00:08:47.77] SPEAKER 1: So what was your family like when you were a child?
  • [00:08:49.77] RUTH CAREY: What was my family like? Well, when I-- my younger sister than me was born three years after I was. So my brother and I were a year apart. We're the only children for quite a little while. And I always felt very loved by my mother. She was very nurturing and caring. My dad was more of a disciplinarian, wanted us to-- "obey" was his big word. But it was a cohesive family. We went to church regularly. That was an important part of family life, was going to church. And we worked hard, work on the farm. And I probably started doing some of my share when I was about five.
  • [00:09:35.94] SPEAKER 1: Wow. So what sort of work did your mother and father do? Mostly just stuff on the barn?
  • [00:09:42.75] RUTH CAREY: My dad was a farmer, but he couldn't make enough money doing that, so he got a job in Dayton. We were only about maybe 35 miles from Dayton. And he got a job at Frigidaire. And this was during the war. And so Frigidaire was making interesting stuff besides refrigerators. So that he had enough money to support the family. Mom didn't have a job until after I left home and went to college.
  • [00:10:09.00] SPEAKER 1: So this is kind of far back, but was a typical day like for you in your preschool years?
  • [00:10:14.34] RUTH CAREY: Oh, dear.
  • [00:10:15.12] SPEAKER 1: Around five, I'd say.
  • [00:10:16.58] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. That's hard to recall. I know that I was at home. And the day that my brother was allowed to take a sibling to school was a big deal. I got to dress up in a nice dress and get on the school bus. And I remember how special that day was because he was in school and I wasn't. But I loved that. But mostly, I was at home with my mom. And I remember when I was five, she made a little box so I could stand on it to wash the dishes because I wanted to help. And when I was that age, I wasn't really involved in the work on the farm. I helped bring the cows in and stuff like that. But my brother, when he'd get home from school, we'd play. Yeah. So it was nice.
  • [00:11:04.02] SPEAKER 1: So you said you and your brother play. What would you guys do for fun? Do you remember?
  • [00:11:08.68] RUTH CAREY: We'd play tag. Or sometimes, because we went to church, he heard all these preachers. This is like conservative-- which I'm not part of anymore. But anyway, so he would get up on his little box, and he would preach. And it was so funny because he just looked like those men that were doing that in the church. But other things that we did-- we'd help mom in the house or-- we didn't have table games or board games or anything like that, so what we did was to create things. And mother knew a lot of counting rhymes, so she would teach those to us, and we would use them in games with each other.
  • [00:11:50.06] SPEAKER 1: That's so fun. Did you have a favorite game or toy or anything?
  • [00:11:56.08] RUTH CAREY: I had a dolly that someone had given me for Christmas. I think my aunt gave it to me. And that was about my favorite. It was-- yeah, it was special, very special.
  • [00:12:07.84] SPEAKER 1: So were you very close with your cousins and your aunts and uncles and stuff? Did they live close by?
  • [00:12:12.96] RUTH CAREY: Well, they didn't live close by, but our family had a yearly reunion, the whole big huge family. My dad was one of 12.
  • [00:12:20.44] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:12:21.24] RUTH CAREY: And so I had-- there were 53 first cousins on that side of the family. And so we did know all of our cousins, and we knew all of our aunts and uncles. And a few-- there was one set of aunts and uncles that lived nearby, but mostly we saw them at the family reunions.
  • [00:12:39.09] SPEAKER 1: So was there any special day or days or events other than the family reunion that you remember from this time, or traditions or anything besides the reunions?
  • [00:12:48.20] RUTH CAREY: Well, I know Easter was always a special time in church, but also in the family. And we didn't do anything on Halloween. That was never a holiday I knew anything about until I got to school and then learned about that then. Because my parents didn't really think that was all that great an idea. So they didn't do it.
  • [00:13:12.32] SPEAKER 1: Right. So this next part is about your youth and you growing up. So did you go to kindergarten?
  • [00:13:20.36] RUTH CAREY: No. There was no kindergarten.
  • [00:13:22.42] SPEAKER 1: Interesting. But you went to elementary school.
  • [00:13:25.10] RUTH CAREY: Yes.
  • [00:13:25.76] SPEAKER 1: And do you remember about elementary school the most?
  • [00:13:29.42] RUTH CAREY: I remember my teacher's name in first grade was Mrs. Graham, and the principal's name was Mr. Becker. And I liked both of them. They were kind people. But one thing I remember from first grade was our teacher often wanted to let the children learn to tell time, so she would ask for volunteers to go out in the hall and see what time it was. Well, I would always raise my hand, but I couldn't tell time. So she called on me one day, and I went out and I stood and I looked at the clock. And I looked and I looked. I could not figure out what time it was. So I was kind of embarrassed, but I had to go back and say, I don't know what time it is.
  • [00:14:06.68] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:14:08.06] SPEAKER 1: That's so funny. What about high school? What do you remember about high school?
  • [00:14:13.34] RUTH CAREY: I mentioned this yesterday when we were talking, but I was in Georgia starting seventh grade and eighth grade. And in that school, kids graduate after the 11th grade. And I never did understand quite why. I think it was a space issue. So after my eighth grade, we moved back to Ohio and I entered regular schools. But I had had the courses that most kids have in ninth grade, so I skipped the ninth grade. So I actually graduated when I was just barely 17.
  • [00:14:47.75] But what I remember greatly was that our class, which was only 18 students, we knew each other really well, and we knew each other's parents. If we didn't know them personally, we knew about them in the neighborhood because our town was like 1,000 people, and most all of them were-- not all of them, but a lot of them were from farms in the surrounding area. And I remember selling concessions at the basketball games-- you could do that when you were maybe a junior-- and enjoying the basketball games. I didn't play in the band, but the band always played, and I always thought that was really cool.
  • [00:15:26.32] And I remember that our teachers were good teachers. They cared about us. They did their best to help us learn the material that they were trying to teach us, with one exception. We had a new guy come in who was the coach, and he was the history teacher. He wasn't too much of a teacher. But the rest of them really were. And we did well. We always placed in the county competition on standardized tests. And so I felt like I got a good education there and was prepared when I finally went to college.
  • [00:16:00.41] SPEAKER 1: That's great. So did you play any sports or engage in any extracurricular activities during high school?
  • [00:16:07.65] RUTH CAREY: I did not play any sports. And there weren't really any extracurricular activities, probably because all the kids had to help out at home on the farms. I think probably the sports were the only extra-- and band were the only extracurricular activities there were. There was a 4H group, which I was not part of, but they were-- it was for farm kids, and the focus was on animals that they raised, would take to the county fair. But I never did that. My brother did that.
  • [00:16:38.81] SPEAKER 1: So what about your school experience is different from school as you know it today, like our school?
  • [00:16:44.06] RUTH CAREY: Well, it was so small. I mean from 1st to 12th grade, there were 350 students, and we were all in adjacent buildings. So when my little sister started school and I was in high school, I could watch after them or see them because they were right there. So that's one huge difference. The other one is technology. Oh, my goodness. I mean, we didn't even have electric typewriters. We had manual typewriters.
  • [00:17:12.26] And I would say-- oh, and the extracurricular activities. I just watch my grandchildren and how much stuff they're in, and that just wasn't part of my school experience at all. But the content-- I took chemistry and physics as well as English in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. And I think we got basic content, so that what we were being taught was not taught in the same way, the technology was not a part of it at all, but the content itself I think, was grounded in good science, good English, good commercial class that I took.
  • [00:17:59.33] SPEAKER 1: So do you remember what kind of popular music there was at that time? Do you remember any of that?
  • [00:18:04.70] RUTH CAREY: I really don't, because my dad was real-- I don't know how you'd describe him, but we weren't allowed to listen to contemporary music on the radio. I knew a lot about church music because we-- that was an important part of our life. But only when I got to college did I begin to know there was another world out there that my family didn't participate in.
  • [00:18:33.50] SPEAKER 1: What were the popular clothing or hairstyles of the time?
  • [00:18:36.71] RUTH CAREY: Well, pink and black were the color combination. Pink skirt, black sweater, or pink sweater, black skirt. And saddle shoes. Do you even know what saddle shoes are? You do. OK. They're Oxfords that are white and black or white and beige.
  • [00:18:55.49] SPEAKER 1: Oh yeah, I think I do.
  • [00:18:56.65] RUTH CAREY: OK. And bobby socks. And I don't-- you probably wouldn't know this either, but the really full skirts that if you turned really quickly, your skirt would go all the way like this around you. We didn't wear-- the girls did not wear pants to school. We always wore skirts or dresses.
  • [00:19:19.10] SPEAKER 1: So you guys didn't have a uniform or anything?
  • [00:19:20.48] RUTH CAREY: No, no, no. It was just whatever you decided to wear.
  • [00:19:23.55] SPEAKER 1: Was there any clothing or hairstyles that your parents don't allow or--
  • [00:19:27.37] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I could not cut my hair. So I had hair down to my waist until I did it differently when I was an adult.
  • [00:19:35.78] SPEAKER 1: Can you describe any other fads or styles from that era?
  • [00:19:43.25] RUTH CAREY: This was such a closed in community. Not really, because I don't-- I just wasn't part of it, so I don't remember.
  • [00:19:53.96] SPEAKER 1: So this one's kind of similar, but was there any slang terms or phrases or words that aren't in common use today that you remember?
  • [00:20:02.40] RUTH CAREY: I'm sure there were, but do I remember them? Not really.
  • [00:20:08.63] SPEAKER 1: OK. So this is more of your high school when you're older, but what was a typical day for you when you were a teenager?
  • [00:20:17.33] RUTH CAREY: Catching the bus at something like 7:00 in the morning. And then school began to start about a quarter to 8:00, something like that. And we had a long route, so a lot of my friends were getting on the same bus I was on. And then we had classes all day. Usually carried my lunch. And then school got out around 3:30. Took the bus home. And then, at home there were always chores to do, either in the house or on the farm.
  • [00:20:49.43] And so bedtime was around 8 o'clock, and then start over again. And on the weekends, usually there was more work because we were there all day so we could help out with other stuff on the farm. And church on Sunday, both Sunday morning and Sunday night. So it was probably pretty boring if you want to think about it. But it was it was all I knew. It was OK.
  • [00:21:15.64] SPEAKER 1: So if you did have a free day or there wasn't a lot of work or something, say on the weekends, or if you just had some free time, what would you do for fun then?
  • [00:21:23.27] RUTH CAREY: Probably didn't do anything for fun. I might have homework that I had to do. And I know sometimes I would be on the phone with a classmate if-- because I took plain geometry in high school, and I would talk to a friend to find out-- did you figure out this theorem or this problem? Do you know how to work this? And so I would do that sometimes. But I can't say there was a focus on fun.
  • [00:21:48.87] SPEAKER 1: Do you have any special memories from this high school era, period? From [INAUDIBLE]?
  • [00:21:54.33] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I was not allowed to date. That was another one of my father's rules. And so whenever we had opportunity as a class to do things together, I really liked that. And some of the boys really wanted to ask me out, but they also knew my dad wouldn't allow me to go because they knew my dad also. But sometimes-- we did the yearbook. Do you guys have a yearbook?
  • [00:22:13.45] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [00:22:13.88] RUTH CAREY: OK. Well, we had to go sell ads in the county to support the publication of it. And so I would get to go with maybe two or three other seniors to varieties of towns. And I always liked that because we'd stop and have lunch somewhere or whatever. It was unusual, and it was a fun kind of activity.
  • [00:22:35.82] SPEAKER 1: That is fun. Did your family have any special sayings or expressions that you remember when you were a little older?
  • [00:22:45.66] RUTH CAREY: Yes. I should have thought about you asking me that, because I don't know if I can recall them. I know that when they felt like we were getting into some kind of mischief, they called it monkey business. Stop that monkey business right now, or something like that. Wow. My memory is not so great.
  • [00:23:08.20] SPEAKER 1: That's OK.
  • [00:23:08.79] RUTH CAREY: I don't remember.
  • [00:23:10.13] SPEAKER 1: Were there any changes in your family life during these school years? Do you remember any?
  • [00:23:15.33] RUTH CAREY: Except for the moves, I don't. And some of those were major moves. When I was 12, we had a huge farm sale and sold all of our equipment and moved to West Virginia. I think I mentioned that when I met you yesterday. And I think it was because my dad just felt like renting on a farm, it was a no-win, no-goal game. So he just-- we went back to West Virginia for a while.
  • [00:23:44.15] And that was interesting too, because I went to a two-room schoolhouse, which was not like the school I had been in. So those moves really changed us because we went to different kinds of cultures. And we went to Georgia then after that and were there for about a year and a half. So I was very struck in Georgia by the racism. And I was only 12 or 13. Because I had seen the school that the black children went to, and it was run down and the buses' windows were broken.
  • [00:24:16.46] And I asked my aunt who lived there-- that's why we went there-- why? She said, oh, they don't mind. It's OK. Well, I got into a real argument with my dad about that, because it just felt so wrong to me that their schools were so-- just in appearance were so different from the one I went to. So even at that age, I was very aware of that kind of discriminatory behavior going on.
  • [00:24:45.51] SPEAKER 1: So did you have any black friends or anything, or were you--
  • [00:24:48.49] RUTH CAREY: No, no.
  • [00:24:48.89] SPEAKER 1: No? It was completely segregated?
  • [00:24:49.97] RUTH CAREY: It was completely segregated, yeah.
  • [00:24:53.12] SPEAKER 1: Wow. So you said earlier that your family didn't celebrate Halloween. Were there any other holidays that your family--
  • [00:24:59.17] RUTH CAREY: Christmas and Easter. I mentioned that one. We didn't do anything special on New Year's, but Christmas was-- even though we never had much money, Christmas was a special day. And we usually read the Bible story of Jesus' birth and all that kind of thing.
  • [00:25:16.96] SPEAKER 1: Would your family come over, like all your cousins and stuff, or was that mostly--
  • [00:25:19.75] RUTH CAREY: No.
  • [00:25:20.86] SPEAKER 1: It was for the reunions.
  • [00:25:21.79] RUTH CAREY: Yeah.
  • [00:25:23.11] SPEAKER 1: What special food traditions did your family have? Did you have any special food that you remember your mom making or your father making?
  • [00:25:31.75] RUTH CAREY: Well, not my father. My father never did any cooking. My mom, she grew up in a family where their mother died when my mother was 12. Her sister was 13, and her sister became kind of the mother of the family. So she was the cook. My mother when she got married felt like she didn't know how to cook, so she was really learning that in my young years.
  • [00:25:58.85] And I thought she did a fine job, but she was not a creative cook. So she fed us, and she canned-- grew a garden, canned lots of food. And then, during the winter, that's what we used in terms of our meals. So it was-- it was not a focus. The creativity of the food was not a focus. But we were sufficiently fed.
  • [00:26:23.28] SPEAKER 1: Are there any recipes you still remember your mother--
  • [00:26:26.53] RUTH CAREY: Oh, yeah, there was one. She used to make upside-down pineapple cake.
  • [00:26:30.27] SPEAKER 1: Yum.
  • [00:26:32.10] RUTH CAREY: And we always really looked forward to that. But that was a special treat.
  • [00:26:35.86] SPEAKER 1: And you guys still make it today?
  • [00:26:37.38] RUTH CAREY: I don't, but my sister does. Yeah.
  • [00:26:39.48] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome.
  • [00:26:40.65] RUTH CAREY: She also made what she called frozen lemon pie. And it was a mixture of lemon juice and egg whites and sugar and all that. Then you froze it in the freezer and served it. That was-- and my sister still makes that too-- two of them. Two of my sisters do that.
  • [00:27:00.10] SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [00:27:08.40] SPEAKER 2: Should we take break?
  • [00:27:09.88] SPEAKER 1: Would you like a break right now? We can take a--
  • [00:27:11.71] RUTH CAREY: Sure.
  • [00:27:11.99] SPEAKER 1: But it's awesome.
  • [00:27:12.27] RUTH CAREY: Whatever.
  • [00:27:15.78] SPEAKER 3: So we actually want to keep going until I tell you, [INAUDIBLE].
  • [00:27:19.72] SPEAKER 1: OK.
  • [00:27:20.34] SPEAKER 3: Because you actually will get a break at 11:36.
  • [00:27:23.21] SPEAKER 1: OK. I was just wondering, because we're at part four.
  • [00:27:24.27] SPEAKER 3: So if you get one more question in-- you're in part four?
  • [00:27:27.13] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. We can work a little over the [INAUDIBLE].
  • [00:27:31.55] SPEAKER 2: I was wondering if maybe I could switch chairs with her because hers squeaks a little.
  • [00:27:37.40] SPEAKER 3: Yes. Good idea.
  • [00:27:38.67] RUTH CAREY: It does squeak a little. You're right.
  • [00:27:41.32] SPEAKER 1: So would you like me to move onto part four then?
  • [00:27:43.11] SPEAKER 3: We'll take a break. It's good.
  • [00:27:45.05] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, we got a lot done.
  • [00:27:47.27] RUTH CAREY: She told me this needed to be quick answers.
  • [00:27:50.47] SPEAKER 3: Oh, that was just for the first few questions.
  • [00:27:53.11] RUTH CAREY: Oh.
  • [00:27:53.32] SPEAKER 1: Oh, OK.
  • [00:27:54.11] SPEAKER 3: That's what-- yeah.
  • [00:27:54.97] SPEAKER 1: Sorry.
  • [00:27:55.80] SPEAKER 3: That was for the demographic information. So we might want to definitely ask follow-up questions. That's really quite far. You were very quick with the answers.
  • [00:28:05.79] RUTH CAREY: Maybe too quick.
  • [00:28:06.77] SPEAKER 3: Yeah. We would love to hear more about things. You have three one-hour sessions get through five parts, and you're in part four.
  • [00:28:17.96] RUTH CAREY: Oh, dear.
  • [00:28:18.76] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. So we can-- should we go back and revisit some of the--
  • [00:28:21.62] SPEAKER 3: It's up to you. Would you like to?
  • [00:28:25.04] RUTH CAREY: I'm here for you guys.
  • [00:28:26.09] SPEAKER 4: Maybe you want to look over the questions, and then if you have anything like--
  • [00:28:29.21] SPEAKER 1: To add. Or do you want to just finish this session today, and then the next session she can go back and add more details?
  • [00:28:34.56] SPEAKER 3: We actually don't want her to look over the question.
  • [00:28:36.59] RUTH CAREY: Oh, you don't, OK.
  • [00:28:37.49] SPEAKER 3: No, because that's-- this is for protocol. But you should maybe make your own determination maybe as a team where you might want to go back and ask again. And that would be fine.
  • [00:28:51.31] I would just state that you are reviewing or revisiting questions in part one for the record, for the video record.
  • [00:29:01.32] SPEAKER 1: OK. So our cameras don't stop at--
  • [00:29:04.06] SPEAKER 3: Oh. Turn it up. Pause it.
  • [00:29:07.50] SPEAKER 1: Because this is what we're going to--
  • [00:29:10.16] SPEAKER 3: Yes, so they can hear all of what you just said.
  • [00:29:14.02] SPEAKER 1: OK. So we're going to go back and revisit a couple earlier topics and questions. So can you describe any of the other houses that you lived in and/or describe any memories you have from them?
  • [00:29:24.35] RUTH CAREY: Sure. We lived in another house in mid or southern Ohio. And I remember more there because I was older. We moved there when I was probably eight. And by that time, one of my dad's brothers and his family lived only about 15 miles from us. So we would get together occasionally. And one night after we'd-- I think we were doing-- you don't know what silage is, but you get a machine that chops up corn stalks, and you blow it way up in the silo. And then you use it all winter for feed for the cattle.
  • [00:30:01.54] We'd been doing that all day, and it was hard work. So we came in, we had dinner. And then we didn't have to work anymore, so we were playing-- all of us were playing tag around the house. And it began to get a little dusk and a little dark. And my brother and I were running opposite directions. And we got to the corner of the house, and we ran into each other and hit my head and his eyebrow and cut his eyebrow open all the way down like this.
  • [00:30:26.44] He's bleeding, and it scared me half to death. They had to take him in and get sutures and all that kind of stuff. And I remember I went up to bed. It was dark. But he was still down-- outside. And I looked down, and his eye was black and it had all this scabbing, and I just felt awful. But that was one of the examples of trying to have fun and what happened as a result of it.
  • [00:30:50.20] But living there, I can see it in my own mind. We lived back a long lane, and so we'd have to go out to the end of the lane to catch the school bus in the mornings. And while we lived there, my parents got me a secondhand bicycle. And I loved that. And that's when I learned to ride a bike. Well, I had learned a couple of years before, but I didn't have a bike. So that was a really fun addition to the things that usually went on.
  • [00:31:19.69] I also remember that at that house, my mother had what she called a-- I'm going to forget the name of it, but it was a piece of glass, and under it was soil where she could plant seeds like in February-- even though it was really cold, the glass protected it, and the sun would let those seeds sprout. And I always thought that was kind of amazing that she could do that. And then she would set them out in the garden when the weather got warmer.
  • [00:31:50.38] SPEAKER 1: When it gets warmer.
  • [00:31:50.92] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. Also, we had no bathroom facilities. We had an outhouse. And that was really unusual even for that time. But we didn't know any different, so it didn't matter. We'd never had a bathroom. So my bedroom was upstairs. My brother's was just down the hall. And then my parents had a bedroom downstairs. And so even though by that time we had-- there were four kids in the family. One was a baby. They still could manage with number of bedrooms they had.
  • [00:32:32.64] And I really liked the barn that we had there. And we got approved to sell grade A milk. And so we had built a little milk shed with a cooling pool in it so it would run cold-- we'd pump. We didn't run cold water. We pumped cold water. And then when we milked the cows, we put the big 10-gallon tanks of milk into the water, and then a big milk truck would come and pick it up every day.
  • [00:33:00.33] And it was another source of income for the family. So those are things that don't happen anymore, because everything's so mechanized now. But I learned to milk as part of the chores thing I was going to talk about. I learned how to milk cows. And later, after we'd been selling Grade A milk for awhile, we got electric milkers, which--
  • [00:33:24.42] I don't know if you know what that is at all, but it's a little machine you set on the floor. It's a tank. And it has attached to it hoses with things that fit on the tits of the cow. Each cow has four tits on its udder. And then it would milk the cow, pulsing like that. And then we would empty the tank-- that little container into the big tank and cool it down. So none of that goes on anymore. It was the times. That's how we did it.
  • [00:33:54.48] Another chore that I remember really well was-- this is when I was in high school-- was hoeing corn. You see all those big fields of corn now? Well, ours were more like 14 or 15 acres. Now they're like 50 acres. But when the corn got about this high, it was too big to use the machines to get the weeds out of the corn because it would destroy the corn. So we had to hoe it by hand. You know what a hoe is? OK.
  • [00:34:24.30] My brother and I and my sister-- and my dad would help too-- would go and hoe the weeds out of the rows of corn for 15 acres. And I remember that my younger sister, who's three years younger than me, she could never keep up. And so I would hoe her row so she could keep along with us. But it was hard work. And I felt it was really important work because we were contributing to the farm making it.
  • [00:34:58.08] So those two aspects of the chores were the ones I remember most, was really-- one of the jobs in the milking chore that I was talking about a minute ago was you had to clean the cow's udder. Because they were out in the fields in the mud and whatever. You had to clean their udders before the milking would happen. Otherwise, you'd have dirt in the milk.
  • [00:35:22.26] And I remember helping my dad in the cold, cold winter. And he said, well, the cow's udder's warm. When you scrub it, put your hands on her udder because it'll warm them up. So who would know that except those times and-- it was an experience that my kids never knew, my grandchildren will never know. But it was important.
  • [00:35:52.61] SPEAKER 1: So while doing any of these chores that you're talking about, did any of you and your siblings get hurt or sick or anything like that kind of stuff happen on the farm?
  • [00:36:03.46] RUTH CAREY: Yes. I remember once we were we were moving the hogs from one field to another. And that was iffy job, because hogs can run any old direction, and they don't like to be herded. So I was helping my dad and my brother. And I was running really fast because I was trying to do my work really well. And I ran right into a barbed wire fence. And of course, it stopped me, and I fell. And I still have a little scar on my thigh from where the barbed wire really got me.
  • [00:36:36.18] But we got the hogs herded, and that-- it was not often that we got hurt on what we were doing, because mostly we were pretty safe. Dad got a tractor by the time I was probably 13 or 14, or 12 maybe. And I learned to drive the tractor. And even my little sister could drive it, because all my dad would have to say is, step on the brake, now step on the accelerator.
  • [00:37:07.95] But sometimes she would be afraid she was losing it, and it was downgrade and she didn't know how to stop. And maybe the hay was all going to fall off the wagon, all those kinds of things. But nothing ever really calamitous happened to us. We were pretty-- other than my knocking my brother's--
  • [00:37:24.03] SPEAKER 1: So did you have any--
  • [00:37:24.51] RUTH CAREY: --face open.
  • [00:37:25.38] SPEAKER 1: Oh, sorry.
  • [00:37:26.16] RUTH CAREY: That's OK.
  • [00:37:26.73] SPEAKER 1: Did you have any friends or classmates that lived nearby you, or was it pretty secluded of your barn and your house?
  • [00:37:32.82] RUTH CAREY: Depends on where we were. When we were in Georgia, we lived in town, which was a very different experience for me. But my dad was working for his-- for my uncle in an office for that year that we were there. When we lived in Ohio, our neighbors would be a farm away, if you know what I mean. There was no one next door. We were about a mile out of town. And you could easily walk to a neighbor's house if you needed to do that. But it was not like you had a next door neighbor as you would if you were living on a street in a town.
  • [00:38:09.40] SPEAKER 1: So which was your favorite house that you lived in?
  • [00:38:12.37] RUTH CAREY: That's a good question. Well, this sounds really funny, but when we were in Georgia, we lived in three different places. But the one house I really like, it had an indoor bathroom. It had a little kitchenette, which I had never seen before. And it was not too far from classmates that I had in school there, because we were living in town. And I think that might have been a favorite house. It was a nice house, and built well and situated well in a yard.
  • [00:38:51.75] And we had a next door neighbor where we played with the kids there, and that was a real different experience for us. We used to do a bicycle lineup. I have a picture of about seven of us on our bikes, even the little boy next door, who was about four. So there were enjoyment-- there was enjoyment for me in living there and enjoying that house.
  • [00:39:16.52] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome. I think we'll stop there for today, because it's almost 2:55. But thank you so much.
  • [00:39:24.00] RUTH CAREY: Oh, you're welcome.
  • [00:39:25.15] SPEAKER 1: I'm so sorry about that misunderstanding about that. But I think we can cover everything in more detail and stuff in our next interview.
  • [00:39:31.20] RUTH CAREY: OK.
  • [00:39:32.50] SPEAKER 2: This was a great start.
  • [00:39:34.25] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. This is so interesting to hear about this stuff, because like you said, none of us would ever have that experience now. It's crazy to think about.
  • [00:39:42.48] RUTH CAREY: Yeah
  • [00:39:42.93] SPEAKER 1: It's really cool.
  • [00:39:45.35] RUTH CAREY: Well, thank you. You're very good--
  • [00:39:46.41] SPEAKER 1: Thank you.
  • [00:39:49.50] RUTH CAREY: You guys know where we stopped last time? Because I don't.
  • [00:39:53.77] SPEAKER 1: I think we were at--
  • [00:39:56.91] RUTH CAREY: I know you thought you went too fast. I remember that.
  • [00:39:59.68] SPEAKER 4: I think we stopped right before you went to college, right?
  • [00:40:04.63] SPEAKER 1: So adulthood, marriage, and family life is I think where we left off.
  • [00:40:12.05] SPEAKER 4: Is that five?
  • [00:40:12.54] RUTH CAREY: I didn't talk about college yet, right?
  • [00:40:13.20] SPEAKER 1: It was four. Yeah. So I think this is--
  • [00:40:16.59] RUTH CAREY: I had told you that I worked for a year before I went to college because there wasn't money enough for me to go? Had I told you thought?
  • [00:40:21.74] SPEAKER 1: Oh, we should talk about that. No, I don't think we talked about that in the last one. So wait, let me-- yeah. We can go over that. Let's see if that goes. So are we doing part four and part five today? Or just--
  • [00:40:37.80] SPEAKER 2: Or just part four maybe.
  • [00:40:38.94] SPEAKER 1: Just part four?
  • [00:40:39.94] SPEAKER 4: We got through part four.
  • [00:40:40.81] SPEAKER 1: No, we haven't. We haven't done anything.
  • [00:40:42.33] SPEAKER 2: We got through part three. So we're up to part four.
  • [00:40:45.18] RUTH CAREY: We're up to part four as I recall.
  • [00:40:46.98] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [00:40:48.07] RUTH CAREY: And your teacher said, you're up to four already?
  • [00:40:51.13] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
  • [00:40:53.04] RUTH CAREY: Slow down.
  • [00:40:55.27] SPEAKER 1: OK. So we can start.
  • [00:40:58.00] RUTH CAREY: It's nice to see you, Mia.
  • [00:40:59.23] SPEAKER 2: Nice to see you too.
  • [00:41:00.88] RUTH CAREY: I'm sorry your arm is sore. That's no fun.
  • [00:41:03.32] SPEAKER 2: It didn't hurt yesterday, but today it's hurting.
  • [00:41:04.85] RUTH CAREY: Today it does.
  • [00:41:05.84] SPEAKER 1: What shot is it? Is it the STD one? What is--
  • [00:41:09.28] [CLANGING NOISE]
  • [00:41:10.17] Uh-oh.
  • [00:41:11.06] RUTH CAREY: Flu.
  • [00:41:11.50] SPEAKER 1: That was really loud.
  • [00:41:15.92] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, flu shot and some-- it was part two of some other shot.
  • [00:41:20.23] SPEAKER 1: Oh. Those like--
  • [00:41:21.61] RUTH CAREY: I bet it's the other one that made you sore, because the flu shot sometimes are easy.
  • [00:41:26.40] SPEAKER 1: The flu shots are usually oh.
  • [00:41:27.59] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. That's what I think.
  • [00:41:29.74] SPEAKER 2: I got cool Band-aids.
  • [00:41:31.18] RUTH CAREY: I just that.
  • [00:41:31.81] SPEAKER 1: They are cute.
  • [00:41:33.84] RUTH CAREY: Cute.
  • [00:41:35.60] SPEAKER 1: OK. So this set of questions covers a relatively long period of your life, from the time you completed your education, entered the labor force, or start a family until all of your children left home and you and/or your spouse retired from work. So we're possibly talking about a stretch of time spanning as much as four decades.
  • [00:41:53.02] RUTH CAREY: You're not talking about college then?
  • [00:41:54.89] SPEAKER 1: No. It starts-- I don't know. It start-- the first couple questions--
  • [00:41:58.65] RUTH CAREY: Since you finished your education?
  • [00:42:00.78] SPEAKER 1: That's just what it says up here, but then some of the questions are about after high school and stuff.
  • [00:42:06.21] RUTH CAREY: All right.
  • [00:42:06.79] SPEAKER 1: So after you finished high school, where did you live?
  • [00:42:11.20] RUTH CAREY: Well, I went to work in Cincinnati, which was the biggest city near our little farm community. And I lived at the YWCA during the week, and then I went home on the weekends. Because there wasn't enough money for me to go to college, and so I had to work to earn enough money. And you won't believe this, but I worked for a year and a summer, and I earned enough money to pay for the first year of college and part of the second year.
  • [00:42:40.12] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:42:40.88] RUTH CAREY: Which you couldn't do now if you had to because college costs so much. And so I did that, and then I went to college in Greenbelt College in Illinois. And then I worked the next summer and earned enough to pay for all of the second year.
  • [00:42:58.75] SPEAKER 1: Wow. What kind of work did you do?
  • [00:43:01.27] RUTH CAREY: I worked for a government service agency. It was called the Cincinnati Ordinance District. And I was a typist. I had a GS2 rating. The ratings are from 1 to, I don't know, 50 or something, depending on the nature of the job. And I was very near the bottom. I don't know what a GS1 does, but a GS2 is a typist.
  • [00:43:30.37] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:43:30.63] RUTH CAREY: So that's what I did.
  • [00:43:31.85] SPEAKER 1: So how much money did you get paid per-- was it a lot for the time, or was it not a lot?
  • [00:43:37.34] RUTH CAREY: It was better than the private organizations because it was a governmental organization. As I recall-- I may be off, but I think it was something like $2,700 a year.
  • [00:43:49.26] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:43:49.68] RUTH CAREY: Which is not very much money. But tuition at the college was $860 a year.
  • [00:43:55.35] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:43:56.18] RUTH CAREY: So I had to pay board and room in addition to tuition, but-- and I had to live for that year. I had to pay rent at the Y and stuff like that. So it worked out.
  • [00:44:06.39] SPEAKER 1: Wow. So can you describe your college experience a little bit?
  • [00:44:09.46] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I loved college. It was-- I think I told you that my father in particular was pretty strict, and I wasn't allowed to date high school and a bunch of stuff that didn't make too much sense to me. But at college, nobody said I couldn't date.
  • [00:44:28.40] [LAUGHS]
  • [00:44:29.67] So if I got asked out to a concert at the college or whatever, I could go if I wanted to. And there were people who asked me, I didn't want to go, but-- and I loved the studies. I had good faculty members, and I really enjoyed the whole experience. I made a lot of good friends there and kept in touch with some of them for a very long time. I met my husband my second year at college. We were both in the band. And the band wasn't anything to write home about, but it was OK. And I played the bass drum, and he played the tuba.
  • [00:45:09.68] [LAUGHS]
  • [00:45:11.90] So anyway, that's how we got to know each other, and then we began dating. And then, at the end of my second year in college, I transferred to a nursing school in Cleveland, Ohio. And I can't remember if I told you when I talked to you before, but I knew when I was nine that I wanted to be a nurse. I think I mentioned that to you. And so this was-- the two years of liberal arts education was a prerequisite for this nursing program because it was a bachelor of science and nursing degree. It wasn't a diploma program in a hospital. And so my boyfriend, soon to be my fiancee, thought, if I really cared about him, I wouldn't go off to Cleveland to go to some school up there.
  • [00:45:53.24] SPEAKER 1: No.
  • [00:45:54.41] RUTH CAREY: And I say, hey, you don't understand. It's not about you. I do like you and I want to stay in touch and in a relationship with you, but I'm going to be a nurse.
  • [00:46:03.56] [LAUGHS]
  • [00:46:05.01] So he had a little bit of a hard time adjusting to that. But he found out that I was truthful--
  • [00:46:10.55] SPEAKER 1: Good for you, though.
  • [00:46:11.78] RUTH CAREY: --and that something was really important to me. So it was interesting because he was going to do a master's degree in Illinois, but he found out that the university where I was in nursing school also had a master's in history, and so he came there. And so when he was studying for his master's degree, he was there in Cleveland as well.
  • [00:46:31.62] SPEAKER 1: So it kind worked out.
  • [00:46:32.47] RUTH CAREY: Yeah.
  • [00:46:33.86] SPEAKER 1: So after college, did you stick around Cleveland, or where did you go?
  • [00:46:38.14] RUTH CAREY: We did for a little while. I graduated-- let's see. Had he finished his master's degree? I think so. I think he finished a year before I did. So he got a teaching job in a Cleveland suburb, and I finished school. And then we got married. And then we lived in the area for two more years after that. And then he-- and I worked at the university hospitals in Cleveland. It was a good experience. I really found nursing to be all that I expected it to be. So it was-- I felt like it was more than just a job, that it was really a calling, something that I needed to do, both through the people I served but also for myself. I really was glad I had gone to Cleveland and gone to nursing school.
  • [00:47:27.52] SPEAKER 1: Instead of saying.
  • [00:47:28.76] RUTH CAREY: Yes.
  • [00:47:29.53] SPEAKER 1: No, that is awesome. So can you tell me a little more about your marriage and stuff? So you said you guys met in college, but what was it like when you guys were dating and stuff, besides the one part where he got mad? Did you get--
  • [00:47:41.90] RUTH CAREY: Well, he didn't really get mad, but he got offended, I think, because he thought I wasn't valuing our relationship. It was a really respectful, good relationship. I felt like, except for him thinking I need to stay where he was, it was an opportunity to be in a relationship where I was valued, and I valued him. So there was a very peer kind of relationship, you know what I mean, rather than a hierarchical one.
  • [00:48:13.40] I did have to teach him a few things. I told him that I wanted to share the driving when we drove anywhere. And he said, oh, OK. Well, why don't you drive now? And so then about five miles later, he says, well, I could drive now. I said, when I said that to you, I meant half and half. I drive half the time, you drive half the time. And so he was able to get that and actually do it pretty well.
  • [00:48:39.65] And he was open to-- because he had grown up in a family where the dad was kind of in charge, although his mother was a professor, as was his dad. But that old hierarchy of men being in charge was-- this was in 1960s. We got married in 1960. And so it was a lot of change for him. But my mom was a really independent woman, for which I'm really grateful. And so I was able to gently help him--
  • [00:49:13.54] [LAUGHS]
  • [00:49:14.84] --know that-- yeah, it wasn't a big deal. It was just that it needed to be different than how he had viewed it.
  • [00:49:20.90] SPEAKER 1: So what did your family think about him? Did they all-- did they meet him right away?
  • [00:49:24.20] RUTH CAREY: They really liked him. He was a very likable person, and he was gentle, smart. Yeah. So it was-- they accepted him really well. My little sisters-- I had three younger sisters, and the two younger ones just really thought he was pretty special. So it was nice.
  • [00:49:44.99] SPEAKER 1: That's adorable. So what about your engagement? Was it a big deal when he proposed?
  • [00:49:50.45] RUTH CAREY: No, it wasn't a big deal. And for an engagement gift, he gave me an eight place setting of silver plate silverware, not a diamond, which is OK. And it was all right with me, and that's what he wanted to do, so it was good.
  • [00:50:09.00] SPEAKER 1: And what about the wedding itself? Was that the big--
  • [00:50:11.67] RUTH CAREY: Yes. We invited all of our family. I think there were like 200 people or something. And it was in the church in my little hometown. And my grandmother-- let's see, how old would she have been then? About 75 I think she was. And she was there. And she was sitting in maybe the front or the second front row. And at one point, I heard her crying because she was just touched by the whole thing. And that touched me, of course. But it was very nice.
  • [00:50:45.20] And the neighborhood boys who were my age or a year older put our little Volkswagen up on cement blocks while we were doing the wedding and the reception so that there was no way we could drive away. But they came and helped us get it down as well. But that was kind of a cultural thing then, that they either do something to your car or-- it was a way of paying attention.
  • [00:51:13.19] SPEAKER 1: That's very cute. What about your dress and stuff? Was it special?
  • [00:51:16.19] RUTH CAREY: I and my mother-in-law made my dress.
  • [00:51:18.86] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:51:19.70] RUTH CAREY: And it was really very pretty. It was a peau de soie, which is a French name for silk. And I just-- it was very lovely. And I liked wearing it. And I gave it to my sister when she got married. She had to alter it a little bit, but she was able to use it too. So it was nice.
  • [00:51:39.23] SPEAKER 1: Do you guys still have the dress?
  • [00:51:40.76] RUTH CAREY: I do.
  • [00:51:41.33] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:51:41.69] RUTH CAREY: It's still in my closet. I don't think I could get into it now, but--
  • [00:51:45.30] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:51:46.75] I do still have it.
  • [00:51:47.78] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome. So have you ever been married again or anything?
  • [00:51:52.43] RUTH CAREY: Yes. My husband died when he was 37.
  • [00:51:56.87] SPEAKER 1: I'm sorry.
  • [00:51:57.95] RUTH CAREY: And our children-- we had two children. They were five and eight years old, little tikes. And he had pancreatic cancer. And it was pretty awful. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. It was just hor-- he had so much pain and was in the hospital. Well, for a long time, they didn't diagnose it right. They told him he had some psychological problem.
  • [00:52:22.07] SPEAKER 1: Oh my god.
  • [00:52:22.79] RUTH CAREY: All this pain was that.
  • [00:52:25.07] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:52:25.57] RUTH CAREY: Then they eventually-- I got him into U Hospital over here, because we lived over near Jackson. And I got him admitted over here, and they finally did diagnose it accurately. And it was way gone. It was fourth stage by that time. And it was pretty awful.
  • [00:52:44.05] SPEAKER 1: I'm so sorry.
  • [00:52:44.86] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. And the kids-- I don't know if you want to hear all this stuff.
  • [00:52:48.62] SPEAKER 1: Well, no. Kids are next.
  • [00:52:49.91] RUTH CAREY: Oh, OK. I was going to talk about them in relation to their father's illness. But anyway.
  • [00:52:55.60] SPEAKER 1: For now, though, can you tell me about how you and your second husband met, and the same thing? What was it like when you guys were dating, like the whole thing?
  • [00:53:00.85] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. Well, he had recent-- I'd known him before. We met in church. And I knew that his marriage was in difficulty. And we were friends. Our families were friends. And then, he and his wife just couldn't make it work, and so they got a divorce. And in the meantime, I took a job up in Traverse City, moved away. And I was up there for about three years. And we stayed in touch.
  • [00:53:32.42] And then, when I came-- I came back down in this area because of-- the kids and I had moved over a year, so we lived in Ann Arbor at that time. But he very much wanted to be in a relationship with me, and so we dated for a while. And then, we got married about four years after his divorce. So I was a single mom for 18 years.
  • [00:53:57.29] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [00:54:00.26] RUTH CAREY: Which I can talk about if you want me to.
  • [00:54:03.05] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. No. So what was-- did your parents or did your family and stuff also really like him?
  • [00:54:08.56] RUTH CAREY: Yes. Yes, they did like him. They were a little skeptical when they knew he was divorced, because remember, they're coming out of a real conservative evangelical church. But they adapted very well and were very accepting of him.
  • [00:54:24.17] SPEAKER 1: And the wedding was also just as great as--
  • [00:54:26.51] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. We lived-- I lived in Dexter, and we had the wedding outside in my big side yard. And it was a nice day. It had rained the night before, but then the day was really pretty. Yeah, it was very nice.
  • [00:54:39.76] SPEAKER 1: OK. So this next is about your children. So can you tell me a little bit about your children and what life was like when they were young and living in the house?
  • [00:54:47.33] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. They were-- they still are wonderful children. And this thing of their daddy dying was traumatic. I think they still carry some of that pain. And Lizzie was so young, she was five, that she couldn't understand what was going on. And when I told them that their daddy was really sick and we didn't think he was going to get any better, she said, but mommy, what are we going to do without a daddy? And I said, well, I don't really know, but I know we're going to be OK.
  • [00:55:27.50] And so we did do OK. I hung on by my fingernails sometimes. And they missed him terribly because he was a really good daddy. But then I had planned to go to grad school over here at the School of Public Health when he got sick. I mean, he'd been not feeling well, but once he was diagnosed. So I delayed it for a semester, and he died in October.
  • [00:55:58.76] And I was in touch with the director of the program that I was going to be in, and she said, it's OK. You've had enough experience in public health nursing. Because I worked in public health after we left Cleveland and he was doing a PhD at Michigan State. So I worked in public health nursing. And so she said, you've had enough experience. It's OK. You can come in January. Which was really very sweet. They usually don't do that.
  • [00:56:22.98] So I told the children that when I was finished with graduate school, and then I would go back and work at my old job for a year, we were going to move to Ann Arbor. Oh, I don't want to move. I don't want to change schools. You know, all that stuff that kids don't want to do. But they had plenty of time to adjust to it. And so by the time it was time for us to move over, they were OK.
  • [00:56:51.09] And they were in seventh and fourth grade. So it wasn't like they were first and second grade or something like that. So we did that. And I began applying for jobs after I finished my master's and got an-- in those days, you got offered jobs. You didn't have to go out. They needed people. So I got an offer from University of Michigan, from University of Wisconsin in Madison, and from University of Illinois. And I picked U of M. So we moved over here, and I began teaching at the University School of Nursing here.
  • [00:57:30.25] And so that was a good transition. The children were doing well in school and made the transition pretty comfortably. And they are glad that they moved to Ann Arbor, because where we lived was this tiny little town on the outside of Jackson. And it was all white, and they wanted some diversity in their lives. And so they were glad we moved here.
  • [00:57:52.10] SPEAKER 1: Ann Arbor is wonderful. So when you were a single mother, did you ever date? And if so, how did your children react to that?
  • [00:58:00.05] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, they still laugh about that, because they say, mom, we drove off every one of those guys.
  • [00:58:05.85] [LAUGHS]
  • [00:58:07.49] But they really liked the man that I married. But I think it was wise for me to not think about marrying someone until they were 18 and older.
  • [00:58:20.98] SPEAKER 1: And very comfortable with the idea.
  • [00:58:22.41] RUTH CAREY: Yes. And they were both in college. And he didn't have to step in as a dad in any way, although they view him as a very significant male person in their lives. So they did just fine with that. I was grateful too, because it could've been awful. I hear about blended families that don't get along very well. So I was glad.
  • [00:58:47.71] SPEAKER 1: So can you tell me a little more about how was being a single mother? Was it ever hard to--
  • [00:58:52.43] RUTH CAREY: Oh, my gosh. It was very hard. And what I finally was able to determine was that they were very trustworthy children. And so if I got scared about something they were doing, which I did sometimes, I would just say to them, you know, I'm really scared. If you could do this differently, I'd really appreciate it. And they would do whatever they could so that I wouldn't be worried about them.
  • [00:59:20.41] Like-- I can't even give you an example now, except that sometimes they would be later than-- and I would worry because I didn't know where they were. So then they would call me and they would let me know where they were. And another thing we did was we, the three of us, set up very few rules for how our family would operate. We didn't have very many. But one of them was you had to call home by 5 o'clock.
  • [00:59:44.29] Because I was teaching, and they-- I couldn't be home when they got home. So everybody was to call home by 5 o'clock, and if they didn't, they lost their next social engagement. They couldn't go. Well, guess who broke the rule? Me. So I was planning to-- I don't even remember what I was planning to do, but some socially event. And so they said, OK, mom. I said, you're right. I have to stay home.
  • [01:00:09.68] So there was a lot-- I was obviously the one who was responsible for money and all that kind of stuff, but in terms of a lot of other things, we talked about it together. If we were going to go on vacation, they got to have lots of input about where we went. So it wasn't-- it wasn't an equal relationship, but it was much more equal than the other parents I knew, who thought I was nuts. What do you mean your kids are choosing where you're going on vacation? You're supposed to do that. So there was a lot of equality in some aspects of our family.
  • [01:00:46.99] SPEAKER 1: Can you describe your children a little more? Were they close? Because I know they're three years apart.
  • [01:00:51.40] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, they're three years apart. And if my daughter had had a say so, they would have been quite close. But her brother, he was older, and he had a harder time with that. He cared about her and he wanted to make sure, particularly when she was like fourth, fifth, sixth grade, that she was OK, that she was safe. And my mother would stay with us once in a while just to be with us, and he would come in and say, Grammy, have you seen Liz? So that there was obvious care for her. But in terms of their closeness, they're closer now, I think, than they were when they were younger.
  • [01:01:32.21] SPEAKER 1: OK. So I know you already told us a little bit about your teaching job, but can you go a little more in detail about your typical day as a teacher?
  • [01:01:38.40] RUTH CAREY: Oh, OK. We had a team of faculty that taught public health nursing. There were probably four or five of us. And there were two aspects. One was we did lectures in a lecture hall on the content and theory of public health nursing practice. And then we took students out into the community two days a week for a full day in what we called the clinical practice.
  • [01:02:05.10] And the public health nurses who were visiting families in those health departments would give me some families that the students could then carry. So I had between 8 and 10 students, and we usually went to Adrian to the health department in Adrian, which is-- I don't know if you know where Adrian is, but it's south of here. And they would carry usually two families. And my role was to help them know what they were doing and to assist them in what the role of a public health nurse was.
  • [01:02:37.58] And I really, really loved what I was doing. And I helped the students learn about themselves as they were also serving families. And I remember two examples of that. I told them that there was a senior professor here at the University who worked with failure to thrive babies, babies that, for no physical reason, were not growing and thriving. And it was because they were not nurtured. The mothers didn't know how to hold and love and get eye contact and all that kind of stuff.
  • [01:03:21.63] So she had a staff of nurses and social workers, and they would visit with these mothers and try to show them how to care for their baby, how to hold the baby, all this. And what happened was the mothers would say to them, you can do this better than I can. Why don't you just do it? Well, they realized that wasn't the right approach. So she then found out that an approach that would be useful was to mother the mother.
  • [01:03:48.21] So the mothers often had not been nurtured themselves, and so they didn't have the experience inside them to be able to know how to do this with a baby. And the babies began to thrive and all that. So I told my students about this. And I said, if any of you have a family with young children, which most of them did, and you want to use this approach, I'll be glad to help you with that. So I had to who did that.
  • [01:04:11.79] And one of them-- I even wrote about this in an article that I got published in a public health journal. One of them was a mom who had three children. She was abused by her husband. The children were like four and two and an infant. And the four-year-old was afraid of his mom because she often hit him. The two-year-old was lagging in growth and development, was not up to what it should be. And the baby was just kind of listless.
  • [01:04:39.73] So the student said to her, you know, I'm here for you. I want to help you with what you want me to help you with. So the mom said, well, would you help me defrost the refrigerator? Because it was one of those old refrigerators, and the icebox just had formed frost that was this thick. She had no idea how to get it off. Well, the student didn't know either. So she went to the Michigan State's extension office in the county and found out how. So she helped her with that.
  • [01:05:08.14] And then the mother asked her for help with other kinds of things like that. Excuse me. And so throughout the semester, the student built a really supportive, helpful relationship with the mother. And the last day that she was to visit, she was in the home. The little four-year-old knocked an ashtray off a table, and it broke on the floor. And he stood there like this because he thought his mom was going to hit him.
  • [01:05:36.57] And his mother walked over to him and put her arm around his shoulder and said, honey, you know you should be more careful. And the student told me later, she said, my mouth just fell open. And I said to her, I've never seen you do that was one of your children before. And she said, nobody's ever cared about me before.
  • [01:05:53.63] SPEAKER 1: Oh my God.
  • [01:05:55.54] RUTH CAREY: I still have tears come up when I think about that story because it's so powerful. And then the student was worried because she was finished and she was leaving. And I just reassured her that anybody who's been cared about, it's never as though they haven't been cared about. They know what that's like, and she'll carry that with her.
  • [01:06:13.39] So that's an illustration of a way in which I felt I could use knowledge and my compassion for the student to help the student then be able to work in very appropriate ways with the family. And I did have a student-- I always interviewed them at the end of the semester to ask them, what'd you learn, what was the semester like, all that.
  • [01:06:40.60] And I had a student who-- most all-- most of my students-- once in awhile, I have a student of color, but mostly I had students out of the suburbs of Detroit, Bloomfield Hills and all that. And they'd never encountered poor families. They didn't have any experience of that sort. So this student had a hard time because she had a very poor family and felt judgmental-- they should be doing better that.
  • [01:07:05.86] By the end of the semester, she was very accepting, and she was able to support the mother in what the mother needed. So I said to her at the end of the semester, I said, I hear what you're saying about how you felt at the end of the term. Tell me why that happened, how it happened. She said, well, you accepted me like I was and wasn't judgmental, and then I was able to do that for the family.
  • [01:07:29.72] So I just had those kinds of powerful experiences over and over. I taught for 10 years at the University. And those kinds of things happened.
  • [01:07:39.28] SPEAKER 1: It's just so amazing that you can have such a large impact on these people.
  • [01:07:43.36] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, that's what I felt too.
  • [01:07:45.19] SPEAKER 1: That's wonderful.
  • [01:07:45.82] RUTH CAREY: And it was like a gift to me, if you know what I mean, to be able to offer that to the students, and then they could offer it to families. Oh, thank you. You're very helpful today.
  • [01:07:59.95] SPEAKER 2: Do you want a water too for your throat?
  • [01:08:01.75] RUTH CAREY: That'd be good.
  • [01:08:04.28] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:08:05.69] SPEAKER 2: Just get a mug and fill it up.
  • [01:08:08.53] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:08:16.15] SPEAKER 1: OK. We can just take a break right now because--
  • [01:08:17.66] RUTH CAREY: OK, great.
  • [01:08:17.86] SPEAKER 1: --the bell's going to ring in a little and interrupt. So I'll go get some water.
  • [01:08:20.28] RUTH CAREY: OK.
  • [01:08:20.50] SPEAKER 3: There's some water in that cabinet right there. Right there. Open it up. There are a few bottles of water. [INAUDIBLE]?
  • [01:08:27.97] RUTH CAREY: No, we aren't. We're taking a break.
  • [01:08:31.45] SPEAKER 3: The schedule is always under there.
  • [01:08:32.91] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE]
  • [01:08:35.24] SPEAKER 1: Do you actually want a coffee or hot chocolate or anything?
  • [01:08:37.27] RUTH CAREY: No.
  • [01:08:37.65] SPEAKER 1: No, you're good? Because I can get that, too.
  • [01:08:39.63] SPEAKER 3: That's OK. It's your second time here. First time in here. You see how it's highlighted?
  • [01:08:44.68] SPEAKER 4: Yeah.
  • [01:08:45.13] SPEAKER 3: And so Mia should be the one watching the clock.
  • [01:08:46.94] SPEAKER 1: Oh, I'm the clock person?
  • [01:08:48.42] SPEAKER 3: Yes, you are. Then you change.
  • [01:08:49.78] SPEAKER 4: I just thought that it would be safe [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:08:53.04] SPEAKER 3: You were absolutely, totally correct.
  • [01:08:54.70] SPEAKER 1: Should I go get it?
  • [01:08:55.80] SPEAKER 3: OK. I'm not sure--
  • [01:08:57.46] SPEAKER 2: Get what?
  • [01:08:57.96] SPEAKER 3: [INAUDIBLE]
  • [01:08:59.05] SPEAKER 1: Get some [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:09:01.08] SPEAKER 3: It's the most recent.
  • [01:09:04.09] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:09:06.91] SPEAKER 3: So let's get rid of these [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:09:07.85] RUTH CAREY: That sign says absolutely no food or drinks are permitted in this lab at any time, and I have water.
  • [01:09:12.91] SPEAKER 4: We used to have computers in here, so--
  • [01:09:14.47] RUTH CAREY: What'd you say?
  • [01:09:15.21] SPEAKER 4: We used to have computers in here.
  • [01:09:16.51] RUTH CAREY: Oh.
  • [01:09:17.80] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, we used to have a computer lab, and then we moved all the computers into the actual room now. So this is cleaned up and stuff, so--
  • [01:09:24.94] RUTH CAREY: So those are exceptions over there?
  • [01:09:27.16] SPEAKER 2: Yeah. I don't really-- do you use these for editing and stuff?
  • [01:09:31.21] SPEAKER 4: I don't know.
  • [01:09:32.14] SPEAKER 2: I know those have software on the.
  • [01:09:34.12] SPEAKER 3: Yes. [INAUDIBLE]. It's going to have to be [INAUDIBLE]. And I'll show you where.
  • [01:09:38.70] SPEAKER 4: So how do you feel [INAUDIBLE] parenting style? You came from a family that was--
  • [01:09:44.12] RUTH CAREY: How did they change?
  • [01:09:44.90] SPEAKER 4: --completely different than like how you--
  • [01:09:45.80] SPEAKER 1: Wait, that's a good question, this, for the actual interview.
  • [01:09:50.47] RUTH CAREY: I can say a couple of words about that if you want me to--
  • [01:09:51.99] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, definitely. We're still filming.
  • [01:09:53.07] RUTH CAREY: --begin again. Do you want me to say it now or later?
  • [01:09:54.79] SPEAKER 1: Oh, wait. Let's just wait.
  • [01:09:56.29] SPEAKER 4: We have five minutes, don't we?
  • [01:09:57.40] SPEAKER 1: Wait, what time is this already?
  • [01:09:58.67] SPEAKER 4: 36. I thought it was 31, so--
  • [01:10:01.11] SPEAKER 1: OK. We have some time.
  • [01:10:03.14] RUTH CAREY: We're on or we're off?
  • [01:10:04.96] SPEAKER 1: What do we think?
  • [01:10:05.60] SPEAKER 4: Go for it.
  • [01:10:06.98] SPEAKER 1: We're on.
  • [01:10:08.59] RUTH CAREY: So your question was about my parenting style?
  • [01:10:11.31] SPEAKER 4: Yeah. How did you--
  • [01:10:12.76] RUTH CAREY: Well, I think college and nursing school helped me a great deal with that. And I was able to get in touch with the fact that I didn't want to parent the way I had been parented by my dad. My mom was a very nurturing parent. But my dad didn't have a good childhood, and so that's what happens when you don't work it out, you do it with your own kids. So I just decided that I was going to do it differently, which meant that I wasn't going to be an authoritarian kind of parent.
  • [01:10:49.17] I was going to listen to them, which I did a lot of. And I really made an intentional effort to engage them in what I was thinking about doing or why I was doing what I was doing or trying to be very honest, but also very compassionate with them. And so if they were behaving in ways that I had a hard time with, I would talk to them rather than putting a punishment out there.
  • [01:11:27.37] Oh, and the other thing I really did a lot of was apologize, because I made mistakes. All the time I made mistakes. And I couldn't always know ahead of time. And so when I realized that I had behaved in a way that was either hurtful or undeserved or whatever, I would go back and say to them, I'm really sorry. I wish I had done it this way. And the next time this happens, I will do my best to do it differently.
  • [01:11:55.46] And they were very gracious with me, and they would accept my apologies. And when they got a little older, they said, mom, you don't ever have to apologize again for anything. You've apologized for everything you could possibly apologize for. So there was an understanding on their part of my intentions. And they cut me a lot of slack. And I told them that I really was trying very hard to let them teach me how to be a good parent. And they really did that because they could give me feedback, and they were pretty generous, I thought.
  • [01:12:33.72] SPEAKER 1: They sound wonderful.
  • [01:12:35.33] RUTH CAREY: They are, both of them.
  • [01:12:36.54] SPEAKER 1: If-- oh, wait. Should we wait?
  • [01:12:38.71] SPEAKER 3: Yeah, we should.
  • [01:12:39.08] SPEAKER 1: Actually, yeah, we'll wait like two minutes.
  • [01:12:41.81] RUTH CAREY: OK. And then that thing will gong, gong?
  • [01:12:44.69] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. It's the most annoying bell thing ever. So let's see if I have-- we don't even have--
  • [01:12:49.49] RUTH CAREY: I was sitting out there when the period changed. It was very loud. Then the kids were very loud.
  • [01:12:55.52] SPEAKER 1: In the hallways?
  • [01:12:56.25] RUTH CAREY: Yes.
  • [01:12:56.69] SPEAKER 1: Actually, you miss a pretty exciting-- there was a fight apparently at lunch.
  • [01:13:02.04] RUTH CAREY: No.
  • [01:13:02.66] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. I missed it. I was in this room.
  • [01:13:04.55] RUTH CAREY: Boys or girls, or both?
  • [01:13:05.36] SPEAKER 1: Girls.
  • [01:13:05.96] RUTH CAREY: Girls?
  • [01:13:06.53] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And were you-- did any of you guys--
  • [01:13:08.13] SPEAKER 2: I was eating lunch.
  • [01:13:10.55] SPEAKER 1: We missed it. But what I've heard from my friends that were down there is that they were arguing or something, and kids had to hold them back. And one of the TAs had to go down.
  • [01:13:19.04] SPEAKER 4: We have good TAs, though.
  • [01:13:20.35] RUTH CAREY: Oh.
  • [01:13:21.26] SPEAKER 2: [INAUDIBLE]. One of the TAs had to tackle the staff.
  • [01:13:25.40] SPEAKER 1: It was very scary. He's our personal trainer for sports and stuff, and he--
  • [01:13:29.36] SPEAKER 2: So he was really strong.
  • [01:13:31.19] SPEAKER 1: He's really strong.
  • [01:13:31.86] RUTH CAREY: And one of them tried to attack him?
  • [01:13:33.35] SPEAKER 2: No. He had to pull them apart, but they weren't cooperating.
  • [01:13:35.75] SPEAKER 1: Like quarreling, fighting a lot, so he had to like--
  • [01:13:38.30] SPEAKER 2: Like get into it.
  • [01:13:39.38] SPEAKER 1: --tackle him out of the way.
  • [01:13:41.76] SPEAKER 2: Actually, we get-- last year, there were quite a few fights.
  • [01:13:44.07] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, this is the first time this year.
  • [01:13:45.76] SPEAKER 2: Yeah. It's pretty-- the whole lunchroom just goes nuts. Kids are on the table trying to watch and film. And after that, it's like the talk of the school.
  • [01:13:55.89] RUTH CAREY: Big event.
  • [01:13:56.88] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, it's a huge deal.
  • [01:13:58.46] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. It's like whoever has the video is the coolest kid ever.
  • [01:14:03.53] [LAUGHTER]
  • [01:14:04.33] Everyone's out to get it.
  • [01:14:05.36] SPEAKER 2: Can you send it to me? I want to see it.
  • [01:14:08.26] RUTH CAREY: That's really funny. Does anybody get hurt ever?
  • [01:14:12.25] SPEAKER 1: Actually, there was that one time [INAUDIBLE] sent that kid to the hospital. Did you guys hear about that? This I don't think was during school, but I know it was on school property. I think it may have been after school. I think it was-- he was fighting with this kid, and he punched this kid so hard that he had to go to the hospital or something. But he's back now. He's fine. But it got serious. That's the only one I know of where it's like--
  • [01:14:32.66] RUTH CAREY: Somebody really got hurt.
  • [01:14:33.42] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [01:14:33.83] SPEAKER 2: That's really scary.
  • [01:14:35.15] RUTH CAREY: Yeah.
  • [01:14:35.48] SPEAKER 1: Usually it's mostly all talk. They'll just be screaming at each, and occasionally one of them will try to sing, but it's not-- and there's always adults there that are trying to run in and--
  • [01:14:46.37] RUTH CAREY: Make sure nobody gets hurt. And you guys have-- don't you do restorative circles here? Restorative practice when people--
  • [01:14:53.57] SPEAKER 2: Oh, the circle? Yeah.
  • [01:14:55.04] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, rather than suspensions?
  • [01:14:56.87] SPEAKER 4: We do?
  • [01:14:58.52] SPEAKER 1: Oh, it's not rather than a suspension. It's just like--
  • [01:15:00.69] RUTH CAREY: Well, but suspensions, according the impression I've got, have gone down by 50% since the circles were instituted.
  • [01:15:06.53] SPEAKER 4: What circles?
  • [01:15:07.52] SPEAKER 1: It's like if someone has-- like if I had a problem with [INAUDIBLE] or all [INAUDIBLE]'s friends, I would initiate a circle, which is where you have a peer, some-- there are volunteers who sign up to be peer coordinators. So then we'd all be in the room talking with two other high schoolers. And we'd be trying to talk out our differences.
  • [01:15:34.02] RUTH CAREY: And the whole focus on restorative circles is to restore relationships rather than to punish. And each tells their story, why they did what they did or what they're feeling or that kind of thing. And it's being used in the courts some now too here in Ann Arbor.
  • [01:15:47.28] SPEAKER 1: Oh. That's awesome. That's actually really-- and I like that it's with high school student-- it's not an adult--
  • [01:15:53.23] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, if there is an adult there it'd be like, wow.
  • [01:15:56.01] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, right. Very different, isn't it?
  • [01:15:57.87] SPEAKER 1: Apparently, it was lots of drama because the girls that were fighting are ex-girlfriends or something, something like that.
  • [01:16:05.05] RUTH CAREY: It gets hard.
  • [01:16:05.65] SPEAKER 1: Of kinds of drama.
  • [01:16:08.80] RUTH CAREY: OK. Was that all the bell we're going to hear?
  • [01:16:10.54] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:16:12.37] SPEAKER 1: What? Oh it's a five--
  • [01:16:14.55] RUTH CAREY: Oh, it's five minutes in between?
  • [01:16:15.54] SPEAKER 1: Because it's passing time for students.
  • [01:16:17.32] RUTH CAREY: Oh, yeah. And then it rings again when the class starts?
  • [01:16:20.30] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [01:16:20.53] SPEAKER 4: The one we have, it's like--
  • [01:16:21.87] SPEAKER 1: It's lunch.
  • [01:16:22.33] SPEAKER 4: --they're going to lunch right now. I don't know why we need it.
  • [01:16:24.37] SPEAKER 1: Like you can't be late to lunch, I guess.
  • [01:16:29.86] SPEAKER 2: Were you guys thinking that for our final one that we would be using this backdrop?
  • [01:16:34.41] SPEAKER 1: Or were we going to try using the blue or something?
  • [01:16:36.48] SPEAKER 2: Yeah. I really don't like this one.
  • [01:16:38.92] RUTH CAREY: This is the one we used the last time I was here, I think.
  • [01:16:41.44] SPEAKER 2: Well, we're mostly going to use footage just from the last one, so it doesn't matter if you're wearing something different or if the backdrop is different.
  • [01:16:50.74] RUTH CAREY: Doesn't matter?
  • [01:16:51.23] SPEAKER 2: No.
  • [01:16:51.73] RUTH CAREY: Oh. You'd tell me if I have to wear the same clothes, right?
  • [01:17:01.09] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:17:04.08] SPEAKER 2: Should I ask [INAUDIBLE] if we can find the [INAUDIBLE]?
  • [01:17:07.08] SPEAKER 1: We could ask them, too, like while we're talking.
  • [01:17:10.68] SPEAKER 2: Oh. yeah. Can I do that? Because sometimes--
  • [01:17:12.96] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, of course.
  • [01:17:13.69] SPEAKER 2: That's a good push.
  • [01:17:14.30] SPEAKER 1: No, for sure, yeah. [INAUDIBLE]. Why would you not be allowed to? Because they're not going to hear us talking in the videos.
  • [01:17:24.57] SPEAKER 2: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:17:26.20] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, go ahead and ask, because we're almost done with four. Yeah, four. We just have popular culture, you're adult years, and then historical and social events. Miss Jenkins? Should I ask about the blue?
  • [01:17:41.79] SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
  • [01:17:44.02] SPEAKER 1: Do you still have the--
  • [01:17:45.95] SPEAKER 3: Yeah? What's up?
  • [01:17:47.89] SPEAKER 1: Do you still have the blue backdrop?
  • [01:17:50.80] SPEAKER 3: It's in Miss Jay's room.
  • [01:17:52.17] SPEAKER 1: Can we use that?
  • [01:17:53.68] SPEAKER 2: If we want to do that for our final interview--
  • [01:17:55.96] SPEAKER 3: We'll figure it out. We've got a whole try to figure out how to do that. I've ordered a blue screen that's portable, so that may do the job. It may not look the same. You don't necessarily have to do it in this room either.
  • [01:18:11.41] SPEAKER 2: What do you mean?
  • [01:18:12.44] SPEAKER 3: You could do that somewhere else.
  • [01:18:14.87] SPEAKER 2: Oh, really? [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:18:18.53] SPEAKER 3: Somewhere else. That's one of the things we'll think about. We've got time.
  • [01:18:22.00] SPEAKER 2: One day when we;re not doing anything else, we should go look for areas we can go do it at.
  • [01:18:26.47] SPEAKER 3: Yeah. You could also maybe go to your home. We'll talk about the options.
  • [01:18:32.14] SPEAKER 1: Oh, OK our final. And we could also do it at my house. I live really close too.
  • [01:18:35.53] SPEAKER 2: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:18:37.26] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, because this, it seems so basic.
  • [01:18:39.90] SPEAKER 3: Yeah. You want to do something different.
  • [01:18:41.05] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Everyone does theirs in--
  • [01:18:42.59] SPEAKER 3: Do something different. I will support that.
  • [01:18:45.47] SPEAKER 2: Wait, Miss Jenkins.
  • [01:18:46.54] SPEAKER 1: That'd be really cool for it.
  • [01:18:47.23] SPEAKER 2: Miss Jenkins.
  • [01:18:48.75] SPEAKER 1: We should-- my-- do you live close by to Skyline?
  • [01:18:54.30] RUTH CAREY: It's about-- you don't know this town, do you? Or your do?
  • [01:18:58.07] SPEAKER 1: Kind of.
  • [01:18:59.07] RUTH CAREY: You know where Wagner Road is?
  • [01:19:00.33] SPEAKER 1: Oh, yeah.
  • [01:19:01.14] RUTH CAREY: Well, we live just beyond Wagner Road off Jackson. So that's probably a couple or three miles from here, something like that.
  • [01:19:07.23] SPEAKER 1: We could always do it at my house. My house is really close. I live like two minutes away if we drive.
  • [01:19:11.44] RUTH CAREY: Oh, it's further than that. It took me about 15 minutes to get here this morning.
  • [01:19:16.09] SPEAKER 2: We can also look for places closer to you if you want.
  • [01:19:19.68] RUTH CAREY: Oh, I'm totally open. Wherever you--
  • [01:19:23.54] SPEAKER 1: There's so many beautiful places in Ann Arbor. It sucks to be in a school classroom in front of a screen.
  • [01:19:31.17] SPEAKER 2: I wish-- if it was nice out, we could even do it outside. That would be so--
  • [01:19:34.64] SPEAKER 4: I mean, the last time we did a single topic, it would be in, what, four minutes, five minutes?
  • [01:19:39.35] SPEAKER 1: What?
  • [01:19:40.33] SPEAKER 4: Like, we don't have to discuss with each other.
  • [01:19:43.27] SPEAKER 1: Wait, our final interview is in--
  • [01:19:45.31] SPEAKER 2: In third try?
  • [01:19:46.13] SPEAKER 1: No, it's this tries.
  • [01:19:47.93] SPEAKER 4: We have a third interview this try, but then [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:19:50.61] SPEAKER 1: Oh.
  • [01:19:50.96] SPEAKER 2: We're not going to see you for so long.
  • [01:19:52.76] RUTH CAREY: I know.
  • [01:19:53.36] SPEAKER 1: So how--
  • [01:19:54.05] RUTH CAREY: I'm coming back here on the 19th.
  • [01:19:55.37] SPEAKER 4: Yeah, We see you the 19th, and then--
  • [01:19:56.69] SPEAKER 1: And then that's when we do part five.
  • [01:19:58.29] SPEAKER 4: Yeah. And then the last one is in [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:20:00.71] SPEAKER 1: Oh.
  • [01:20:01.37] SPEAKER 2: We have a lot of time.
  • [01:20:02.54] SPEAKER 1: We are on tries, our class. And so since we only have this class first and third try, we have second try off. So the next time we see you after our third interview, it will be spring and nice and warm, so we could always do something outside.
  • [01:20:15.22] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I told [INAUDIBLE] that-- I think he said it will probably be in March. And I said, we're not even going to be here in March. We're going to be down south. And he said, well, we can arrange that.
  • [01:20:25.40] SPEAKER 1: And we could definitely figure that out. We'll have tons of time before then.
  • [01:20:28.95] SPEAKER 2: It'll be nice weather.
  • [01:20:31.17] RUTH CAREY: You guys will be so grown up I won't even recognize you.
  • [01:20:36.69] SPEAKER 1: So you can [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:20:38.11] SPEAKER 4: What? Oh. [INAUDIBLE] when you left, were your parents skeptical about what you were doing, how you were raising your kids? How were they-- were they just like, OK, you're free. Do what you want?
  • [01:20:49.68] RUTH CAREY: No. They were-- well, my mom was. She was pretty accepting. But my dad-- once I had my first child and I was visiting them, and he was in his high chair. But he was probably close to two, not big enough to sit on a regular chair yet. And my dad kind of looked at me sideways, and he said, you know, I don't really understand what you're doing with your children, but I sure do like your children.
  • [01:21:19.45] [LAUGHS]
  • [01:21:21.33] So there was that ability on his part to not just criticize my way of parenting but to look at the product of it and feel like, oh, OK, I think she's doing OK. But it was when I left home, that was your question, not just about the children but my life.
  • [01:21:38.50] SPEAKER 4: In general, yeah.
  • [01:21:39.40] RUTH CAREY: Well, the thing my dad said when I left to go to the college, he said, find a good husband. My mother wanted me to get an education and to do what I wanted to do. She was very supportive of my desire to be a nurse. So I thought that was the weirdest thing my dad said. That's not why I was going to college. So he just had a different orientation. But I always felt like he loved me and to a certain degree trusted me to do what was good for me.
  • [01:22:08.77] So it's a good question, Naheem. I felt like he didn't just say, go and do what you want to do. I know he held certain values about what-- he wanted me to be who he wanted me to be. He wanted me to be a teacher. Well, I ended up teaching nursing many years later. But it wasn't that he always wanted to control everything I did, but he thought he knew better than I did. You know what I mean?
  • [01:22:40.26] And that was one of the things I changed, because you also asked about my parenting with my kids. I learned from them that sometimes they knew better than I did what they needed. And I tried always to be open to that. And when they got to be teenagers, I even said that to them. I think on this one, you know better than I do.
  • [01:23:01.15] SPEAKER 1: So did your parents ever directly try to interfere when they came to visit or anything with your parenting?
  • [01:23:04.83] RUTH CAREY: No.
  • [01:23:05.46] SPEAKER 1: No, they were always-- OK.
  • [01:23:06.93] RUTH CAREY: They never did that, for which I'm grateful.
  • [01:23:10.16] SPEAKER 1: And so I don't know if you do, but if you could, if you could change anything about your parenting style or anything, what would you change?
  • [01:23:16.41] RUTH CAREY: What would I have done?
  • [01:23:17.16] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [01:23:19.07] RUTH CAREY: That's a good question. I would learn faster so that I would have made fewer mistakes. But one thing I did do, which I think was a good thing and it helped me do a better job, was my kids and I would sit down at the kitchen table, dining room table, and have a conference about how are things going. Let's name what's going well first. And then, what needs to change?
  • [01:23:58.97] And I remember this so clearly. When I got to the part of what needs to change, my son, who really was kind of hard to live with sometimes because he's just who he is, he said, yes, I need to stop giving my sister such a hard time. I never expected to hear that from him. And she never criticized him. She was very-- she looked up to him a lot. So those kinds of things I felt I kind of stumbled into, because our family never did that kind of thing.
  • [01:24:34.04] And I think that was a way for me to engage their best persons. Do you know what I mean? Their best parts could come out when we would sit like that. So it's not something I would change, but it was something that was different from anything I had ever experienced. It was really good.
  • [01:24:54.04] SPEAKER 1: OK. So this next section, like I said, is popular culture in your adult years. So--
  • [01:25:00.12] SPEAKER 2: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [01:25:01.22] SPEAKER 1: No. This is part four. So yeah, five was work and retirement.
  • [01:25:05.41] RUTH CAREY: OK.
  • [01:25:06.59] SPEAKER 1: So can you describe any of the popular music of this time when you were an adult?
  • [01:25:09.71] [LAUGHTER]
  • [01:25:10.19] RUTH CAREY: I'm the worst person in the world to ask that question of. This would have been in the '70s and '80s. And I wasn't much of a music fan. I didn't go to musical concerts. I went to classical concerts over at the Hill auditorium. But pop music, I really can't even talk about it because I don't really-- and my son looks at me-- he was telling me the other day about Carmen Miranda, which I don't know if you guys know about, but in the '70s and '80s, she was a Brazilian opera singer who was just really well known.
  • [01:25:52.77] And he had told me about her before. And he said, I can't believe, mom, that you never-- didn't even know her name. So I don't know why that is, but that's not something that was a significant part of my life.
  • [01:26:07.95] SPEAKER 1: Do you remember any popular clothing or hair styles at this time, though, like fashion trends?
  • [01:26:13.65] RUTH CAREY: And this would have been in my adulthood, right?
  • [01:26:16.11] SPEAKER 1: Yes.
  • [01:26:17.81] RUTH CAREY: I remember them from high school. Wow.
  • [01:26:23.45] SPEAKER 1: Or did you ever have any problems with your kids wearing certain things or something like that?
  • [01:26:29.75] RUTH CAREY: No. They were very-- well, my son always wore-- he was so funny. This is when he was like 16, 17. So this would have been in the early '80s. And I thought he was drinking more than he should have, and he wasn't of age anyway. And he got sick when he got home and threw up and all this kind of stuff. And I said, OK Jim. I want you to go with me to see a counselor who works with kids your age about alcohol use. And so he said, no, I don't want to go.
  • [01:27:10.56] So I said, OK, if I had a lump in my breast and I wouldn't go to doctor to find out what it is, how would you feel? Oh, OK, I'll go, he said. But he wore jeans that had holes in them, any he wore his Heineken beer tee shirt. And I just ignored it. So he would use his clothing as sort of a statement about where he was. My daughter was real preppy. And for about a year or a little less than a year, she was his advisor, and he looked really nice when she had something to say about what he wore.
  • [01:27:44.23] But then, it didn't last because that was not his style. So they didn't act out very much, except what I've just now described. There were never things that I just couldn't tolerate. And the outcome of the counseling was the man said to me afterward and said to him afterward, he's within the realm of normal behavior for his age. And driving home, he says, I told you, mom.
  • [01:28:08.86] [LAUGHS]
  • [01:28:10.31] I said, yeah, well, I'm glad we found out from somebody besides me.
  • [01:28:16.11] SPEAKER 1: What were some popular things that your kids did? Was there any--
  • [01:28:21.67] RUTH CAREY: They were-- I don't I don't know exactly what popular means, but they were both in the band and the orchestra in school. And they really liked that and enjoyed it. Both the music teachers that were teaching band and orchestra, they had good relationships with them. And I always went to their concerts when they played at school. It seems like my son also went to some of the pop singer concerts that were held in town. I can't tell you who it was. I can't tell you what the music was. So I'm not a good one on that question. Sorry.
  • [01:29:03.78] SPEAKER 1: That's OK. The last session about it, though, is were there any slang terms, phrases, or words used then that aren't common right now in this time?
  • [01:29:13.02] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. It seems like things were-- I don't know if you use this word. Now something that's really cool was keen. Is that-- no, that's not one, OK. That's really
  • [01:29:26.28] keen. .
  • [01:29:26.54] SPEAKER 2: That's a shoe brand.
  • [01:29:28.01] RUTH CAREY: Oh.
  • [01:29:28.17] [LAUGHS]
  • [01:29:30.77] That was one. And another one that I would hear the kids say was, oh, that's neato, something that they really liked. So those kinds of words were ones that I had never heard before used that way, but they were commonly ones that they used.
  • [01:29:45.42] SPEAKER 2: Can I ask one more?
  • [01:29:46.43] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, of course.
  • [01:29:49.11] SPEAKER 2: What's your most memorable big thing that happened worldwide, like the civil rights movement or something overseas or something like that?
  • [01:30:02.91] RUTH CAREY: The Vietnam War was a very affecting event. And I grew up in a Republican family that supported whatever the Republicans wanted to do. But I had changed that long before I had children, and I was much more liberal than my parents. And so I was really affected by what was happening, both to the Vietnamese but also to our own military forces there.
  • [01:30:31.91] And that was a huge deal for me. I participated in resistance marches. There's a company north of Ann Arbor that made engines for the cruise missiles that were being used in that war, and so I was part of a group of people who went up to that company and just stood. And some people went across the line and were put in jail for protesting it. I wasn't. My kids said, mom, please don't go to jail. So I said, OK, I won't. So that was a big deal.
  • [01:31:04.84] And the civil rights-- the whole civil rights movement in the south, and the north, were very important things to me. And I read a fair amount about that. I wasn't involved in the actions in the south because I was taking care of the kids. But those two things strike me. Thanks for asking about that.
  • [01:31:27.96] SPEAKER 4: I had a question about that, too. It was kind of blunt, but what happened-- like, with your parents being so conservative and you being so liberal, how did that--
  • [01:31:36.48] RUTH CAREY: As an adult for me, how did I relate to them?
  • [01:31:38.79] SPEAKER 4: A lot of people toe the line with their parents, sort of.
  • [01:31:40.89] RUTH CAREY: Oh, yeah. Well--
  • [01:31:43.80] SPEAKER 2: Did it strain your relationship with them being--
  • [01:31:47.58] RUTH CAREY: Not with my mom. She was pretty able to accept her kids. Her kids were really important to her, so if they did certain things she didn't necessarily do herself, that was OK. With my dad, he told my sister once, I think your sister's practically a communist, because of the liberal positions. And I would talk him them about it, and sometimes dad and I would get into, not arguments really, but disagreements, because he held values that-- you've clearly picked up on what I've said about him.
  • [01:32:21.51] But he also respected me. And so there was an ability for him to listen a little bit to me. And this is probably appropriate to do here. My dad had behaved-- he punished us too much, physical punishment. And also, I thought he was sometimes inappropriate in how he related to my cousins, who could dress and wear makeup and do all the stuff he wouldn't let us do. And so he'd say how pretty they were and how-- all this kind of stuff.
  • [01:32:55.18] So when I was about-- he was 80, so I was 50s or something. I went to see him once. And I'd written him a letter before I went and told him how inappropriate I thought some of that was. And so when I went down, I said, can we talk about that letter, dad? And he said, oh, will you go really easy?
  • [01:33:17.94] [LAUGHS]
  • [01:33:19.04] I said, yes. And I said, you know, you never would have had to physically punish me. I tried so hard to do just what you wanted me to do. And he said, if I had it to do over, I would have talked to you more than I did rather than punish you. And I said, and this other business about the other cousins that were my age who-- he said, I had no business doing that. And I'm sorry.
  • [01:33:44.59] Well, we were both crying by this point. And it just melted my anger at him away because he took responsibility. Even though it was late, he did take responsibility for it. And so that's some of how it worked out, that he could eventually listen, and I could gently talk with him about it. So I was grateful, really grateful that he--
  • [01:34:12.05] SPEAKER 1: That's great.
  • [01:34:12.92] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, that he could be that open.
  • [01:34:15.04] SPEAKER 2: That'd be a big weight off your shoulder.
  • [01:34:16.76] RUTH CAREY: It was. It absolutely was. And I didn't need to-- I didn't need to carry any of that inside of me, and I didn't need to talk to him about it anymore.
  • [01:34:24.73] SPEAKER 1: That's great closure.
  • [01:34:25.87] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, it was.
  • [01:34:27.37] SPEAKER 1: Well, I think that concludes--
  • [01:34:29.08] RUTH CAREY: Oh, there we are.
  • [01:34:29.90] SPEAKER 1: --our interview session for today.
  • [01:34:32.08] SPEAKER 2: That was a really good session.
  • [01:34:33.25] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. That was so interesting.
  • [01:34:35.47] SPEAKER 2: So thank you so much.
  • [01:34:35.92] RUTH CAREY: You're very welcome. What have we got left in terms of the outline? It's retirement.
  • [01:34:40.61] SPEAKER 1: Part--
  • [01:34:41.03] SPEAKER 4: Don't tell her.
  • [01:34:41.76] SPEAKER 1: What?
  • [01:34:41.95] SPEAKER 4: Because then she's going to think about it.
  • [01:34:44.31] RUTH CAREY: Oh, then I will-- don't tell me. I'm not supposed to know. I remember that. The teacher said, we don't want her to think of those questions.
  • [01:34:55.55] SPEAKER 1: So this set of questions covers a relatively long period of your life, from the time you entered the labor force or started a family up to present time. So what was your primary field of employment? How did you get started with this particular tradition/skill/job? What got you interested?
  • [01:35:15.20] RUTH CAREY: The work that I did-- I told you already about earning money to go to college. So I'm going to talk about after I was able to go to college and what happened in terms of work after that. I think I also told you that I always wanted to be a nurse because I had a cousin and an aunt who were. But I didn't know very much about nursing education until a director of nursing in a little hospital where I was doing nurse aide work said, you need to go to Cleveland to nursing school because they have a bachelor of science and nursing degree. I didn't know what a bachelor of science and nursing degree was.
  • [01:35:54.62] But then I needed to find a college that was accredited that would transfer my credits to that nursing school. So I got some help in doing that. And then, when I graduated from nursing school, I was obligated to work for the hospital for two years because they had paid my tuition, which was a godsend. And so I did that. I worked on a men's medical ward, and I learned a lot. I liked working with them. I was on a-- different from a private ward, I was on a public ward. So poor people were the ones that were patients there. And I really liked working with them.
  • [01:36:34.82] After two years, my husband and I moved to East Lansing because he was doing a degree at Michigan State. And I wanted to do public health nursing, so I started working for a health department in Ingham county. And that was really good work. I think I mentioned it a little earlier in my conversation with you that many families who have young children don't know what to expect at what ages. And so there was a lot of education to do with them. And they were so glad for the help. And they didn't know about nutrition.
  • [01:37:13.13] So I found that work immensely rewarding, and I worked there for, I don't know, two or three years. Then we moved because my husband took a teaching job at Spring Arbor College over in Jackson County. So then I went to Jackson County Health Department. And I worked there for, jeez, probably 13 or 14 years, became a supervising nurse in the health department. And then, that's when my husband got sick-- I told you that already-- and died.
  • [01:37:49.86] And I had planned to go back for a master's degree in public health at the School of Public Health here. And so after he died-- I have to tell you this little story, because it's so typical of him. He's gotten really sick, and they finally did exploratory surgery to find out what was wrong with him. And it was pancreatic cancer. And he knows that that's what it is and that he doesn't have very long to live.
  • [01:38:17.19] And so I went in after his surgery to be with him, and he said, I don't want you to let this delay your entry into your master's program. And I said, I don't even want to talk about my master's program. I just want to be here with you. And so I did enter that next January. He died in October.
  • [01:38:40.36] SPEAKER 1: I'm so sorry.
  • [01:38:41.45] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. Thank you. So the master's program was really good, and I learned an immense amount about organizations and how to function well in an organization like a health department. And then, when I finished graduate school-- I got a nice award there too. The nursing program had an award that an old public health nurse had made available with a grant. It's not a grant, it's a gift that they give you with the award.
  • [01:39:16.26] SPEAKER 1: It gets passed down?
  • [01:39:17.47] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. And I was nominated for that, and my classmates chose me to get that award, which was surprising.
  • [01:39:25.07] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome.
  • [01:39:26.11] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I really thought that was very nice. So when I finished, then I went back into public health nursing. No, that's-- yes I did, for a year or two. And then I took a job teaching here at the School of Nursing. And I did that for 10 years. And I think I may have told you that already. But I really enjoyed it. The students were wonderful to work with. They were seniors. And public health is one of the last clinical courses they take. So I did that for a long-- a decade.
  • [01:40:01.21] And then, because I didn't have a PhD, I couldn't get tenure at the University of Michigan. And so my department chair said to me, you know, we can probably get you reappointed every year because your evaluations are really good and all that. But if you really want to stay here, you're going to have to get a PhD, which I decide not to do because my kids were both teenagers and I was their only parent, and I had more allegiance to them than I did to a PhD.
  • [01:40:28.57] So I had been asked several times by a couple of nurse friends of mine in Traverse City to consider coming there as the vice president for clinical affairs. And I said, no, I don't want to do administration. I want to do frontline work with families. And they said, well, think about it. And I said, OK, I'll think about it. So I-- I'm still teaching at the University. I thought about it and thought about it. OK.
  • [01:40:56.53] I called them up and I said, all right, I'll come, but I can't come for a year because my youngest child is still in high school, and I can't-- that's OK. We'll wait. So then I went there, and it was a very good agency. It served 32 counties in northern lower peninsula of Michigan. And we had six offices.
  • [01:41:17.23] SPEAKER 1: And you were the vice president, so did you have a lot of power?
  • [01:41:20.77] RUTH CAREY: Well, I don't ever think of it as power. I had a lot of responsibility.
  • [01:41:24.99] SPEAKER 1: That's the word.
  • [01:41:27.28] RUTH CAREY: And I had responsibility for all the clinical services we were offering, so the nursing care, the physical therapy we offered, social work. We had a hospice, and I was responsible for the quality of care that was done. And it was-- the staff was really good. So I did that for three years, and then I really decided administration is not my first love. It's a lot of work, and I do it fine, but I think I want to do something else.
  • [01:42:00.26] And I had met this man that I'm now married to, and it looked like we were going to have a relationship. And he was-- he would have come to Traverse City he said, but because he was located here and my kids were here-- one was in college, one was working-- I decided to come back. So when I returned, there was-- the place where my first husband had taught on the faculty, I knew a lot of the people there.
  • [01:42:30.14] And so one of them, who was in charge of the extended campuses, the extension campuses that some-- like Michigan, they have one in Flint and one in Dearborn. Well, this small college had one in Dearborn also. And he really wanted me to teach in a gerontology curriculum. And so I agreed to do that when I came back down. And I loved that. The students were all full-time employed, and they had already gotten 60 credit hours somewhere else and they wanted to finish a bachelor's degree. So they came to class in the evening from 6 to 10 o'clock.
  • [01:43:08.32] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [01:43:10.01] RUTH CAREY: Which I thought was amazing. But they-- and it was a lecture kind of curriculum. It was reading, writing papers, and class discussion. And I found it very interesting and rewarding. The students did good work. So I did that until my husband took a job down at Antioch College as president. So we had to move to Ohio.
  • [01:43:33.43] SPEAKER 1: So can you describe the steps of the process involved in your job from start to finish? What materials did you use and where did you get them? And have they changed over time, the materials and resources and all the stuff?
  • [01:43:46.57] RUTH CAREY: Well, our main resources were other community agencies as well as the state health department. The state health department had staff that would come and assist in a local health department. And if you were having difficulty with some particular health problem or political something or other, they were a good resource, and they often helped us.
  • [01:44:10.36] But the two women who had started that community health organization in Traverse City were really knowledgeable. One had her PhD in organizational psychology, I think. And the other one had a master's in clinical medical care. So they were really knowledgeable and could help me. I also did a lot of reading about organizations. So we had adequate resources to help us.
  • [01:44:40.51] SPEAKER 1: So what was a typical day like for you during the working years of your life?
  • [01:44:46.09] RUTH CAREY: Well, it depends on where I was. When I was teaching at Michigan, it was really a good deal because I had the summers off and my kids were still in school. And so I didn't worry because I could be with them during the summer. So on clinical days, when I was taking them down to the health department, I had to leave the house by 7:00 or 7:15. So the children got themselves up. They were mid-teens now. They got themselves up, got ready for school, got the bus and went.
  • [01:45:19.12] And then, I would be home around 5 o'clock. So that worked really well. And I can't remember if I told you that the kids shared household responsibilities with me by the time-- I did tell you that. And that helped too because then I didn't have everything to do because they were very--
  • [01:45:35.53] SPEAKER 1: Responsible.
  • [01:45:35.97] RUTH CAREY: --responsible, yeah. And so the evenings were pretty much at home. I didn't have a lot of evening meetings, which I do have now. But it was a doable kind of working schedule and parenting both. When I was in Traverse City, the children had already left home. They were in college. And so my time was my own. And I would, depending on what I was doing that day, get up early, go to work and work hard all day, go home, relax. I didn't have evening responsibilities for the most part. So it was an OK time, OK schedule.
  • [01:46:21.29] SPEAKER 1: Definitely. So what specific training or skills were required for your job? Skills meaning like patience and those kind of things.
  • [01:46:35.20] RUTH CAREY: I felt like one of the most important skills that I had that helped me in all of those positions, whether it was as an administrator when I was vice president or when I was a faculty member or a frontline nursing care deliverer in the community, was compassion. Because I often encountered people who were in difficulty in their lives, or they didn't know how to get what they needed in the community.
  • [01:47:09.48] And so if I could, rather than just telling them what to do-- which I had the knowledge to do-- if I could engage them in identifying what do you need, what are you trying to do here that I can help with, and then engaging them in figuring out how to get it, it was much, much better. And it worked with staff as well when I was responsible for staff. If there was a problem, I felt like I had the skill to work with them to figure out what that was without judgment and criticism.
  • [01:47:43.19] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, no, that's awesome.
  • [01:47:44.33] RUTH CAREY: You understand what I'm saying, yeah. I felt like that was one of the main-- I also needed to have resources so that when the problems came up, I could research it and help so that I was knowledgeable in terms of helping them figure out what they wanted.
  • [01:47:59.27] SPEAKER 1: I think compassion is so-- that is such an important thing to have rather than just--
  • [01:48:03.74] RUTH CAREY: Power.
  • [01:48:04.15] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, pretty much. So what technology changes occurred during your working years?
  • [01:48:10.37] RUTH CAREY: Well, when I was teaching at the University of Michigan-- this would have been-- I started in 1980 and taught there until 1990. And one faculty member in my faculty group was using a computer with her students. None of the rest of us were.
  • [01:48:29.83] SPEAKER 1: Only one.
  • [01:48:30.47] RUTH CAREY: Only one.
  • [01:48:31.16] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [01:48:31.88] RUTH CAREY: And then, when I went to Traverse City, which was the next place I worked, they had one of these huge, great big computers that they had a special room for. I don't know if you even know that that was the case when those first began to be used. And they were talking about PDAs. I forget what that stands for, but they're handheld computers that the nurses could use out in the field to dictate their notes after they made a visit to a family. But they didn't really get those implemented while I was there.
  • [01:49:01.79] It was so backward in terms of the present day technology. I'm sure you wouldn't even recognize what they were doing. And then when I came back and I was at the little liberal arts college where I taught in Dearborn, very little technology was being used. I would go in the classroom. The students would sit in a circle around the desks. We would talk about the content of the class.
  • [01:49:25.46] SPEAKER 1: Do you think--
  • [01:49:25.89] RUTH CAREY: They hand-wrote their papers or typed them. Go ahead.
  • [01:49:29.72] SPEAKER 1: Do you think it'd be much different if you had the technology now?
  • [01:49:32.36] RUTH CAREY: Yes.
  • [01:49:33.19] SPEAKER 1: In a good way or a bad-- or was it nice that there was no--
  • [01:49:36.77] RUTH CAREY: Well, I have to tell you, I still struggle with technology. I have a desktop computer, and I know how to use email and I know how to get on the web. But if something goes wrong, like if my screen just does something weird and I don't know how to fix it, I have to always ask my husband. I'm getting blah, blah, blah. Can you help me? So he comes up and figures out what to do. So my kids say to me, mom, we came into this world wired. It's just part of who we are to know how to--
  • [01:50:10.44] SPEAKER 1: Us especially, right?
  • [01:50:10.94] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, like you guys. You really have, probably from the time you were very little. And totally foreign language to me. So I've learned a great deal, but I'm glad I'm not having to work all the time with technology.
  • [01:50:26.90] SPEAKER 1: So what is the biggest difference in your primary field of employment from the time you started until now?
  • [01:50:33.65] RUTH CAREY: Well, one of the biggest difficulties and changes is that the budgets have been cut in health departments. There are many fewer public health nurses now than there were when I was doing public health nursing. And I don't know the rationale for that, but it's-- in terms of preventive care, keeping people from becoming ill so that then it costs more when they go to get care, I think it's a big mistake.
  • [01:50:59.66] And I'm hopeful that the Affordable Care Act, which is now available to almost everybody, has helped a great deal with people being able to get care, at least. But public health nursing, the focus was often on education and teaching and instruction so that people learned how to take care of themselves and their children. I wish it weren't that way, but that's the biggest change that I'm aware of.
  • [01:51:28.30] SPEAKER 1: I did not think of that. So how did you judge excellence within your field? So what makes someone respected? Is it just based on how much the patient's like you, or is it--
  • [01:51:45.72] RUTH CAREY: Actually, my sense is that it's a combination of they like you, but you are a help to them, like their lives are better because you're involved with them. And I think that was true in every setting I practiced in, whether it was the hospital right after I graduated or if it was in public health or if it was teaching students. I've always been very fortunate and was very respected in all the areas that I worked in.
  • [01:52:19.94] And one of them, I think, is that I come at most things I do with a lot of caring and compassion. It's hard to hate somebody that's compassionate.
  • [01:52:29.39] [LAUGHS]
  • [01:52:30.79] So that's one piece of it. But the skill and knowledge to do the job with skill is the other piece. Being a nice person is not sufficient if you're working in a field where you're trying to assist people's lives to improve and their educational level to improve in terms of what their health concerns are. So I think it's both knowing how to relate to people, whether it's patients or colleagues, and it's also having adequate knowledge and knowing where to gain more knowledge when you need it, and then doing that.
  • [01:53:08.68] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome. What do you value most about what you did for a living and why?
  • [01:53:21.13] RUTH CAREY: I think what I value most is something I think I mentioned to you when I was here the last time, and that is I felt like the work I did was really important to the families that I served and to the students I taught and that it made a difference for them, so that for me, it was very rewarding. And that I made a difference in the lives of people that I either taught or worked with I think is the most important.
  • [01:53:55.84] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Just knowing that you had even the slightest impact would be so great just to see that.
  • [01:54:00.41] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, that's how I felt.
  • [01:54:03.55] SPEAKER 1: What is the biggest-- oh, wait. This seems like the same question. But what is the biggest difference in your primary field of employment from the time-- oh, wait, that is the same thing. OK, we're going to skip that one. It's the same thing. So this next part is called locale, residents, community. So actually, you already told us, but could you describe in more detail about the moves you made during your working years and retirement prior to your decision to move into your current residence?
  • [01:54:33.35] RUTH CAREY: OK. I did give you some of that information. We were in East Lansing. Then I was here. Then I went to Traverse City, and then I taught in Dearborn. So the only time I moved in the part I just told you was from East Lansing to Ann Arbor, and then Ann Arbor to Traverse City. Because when I taught in Dearborn. I stayed here.
  • [01:55:03.04] SPEAKER 1: You would just drive there?
  • [01:55:04.03] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. And I found the places that I lived-- I lived in student housing when I was in East Lansing and so got to know a lot of neighbors, and I got to know the community. Because part of public health nursing is knowing the community that you're serving. And I don't mean just the people, I mean the structures of the community.
  • [01:55:27.25] So we looked at aggregate populations, like what's the infant death rate for all women in this county? Or what's the employment status of people who want to work in this county? Do you understand what I'm saying?
  • [01:55:45.87] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [01:55:46.68] RUTH CAREY: So it's not just person-focused care. It is that, but it's also about the population of people that are in the community you're serving. So I had a feel both for East Lansing and then for Ann Arbor when I was teaching here, and for Adrian. I think I told you I took students to the health department there. So I got to know a great deal about where I was serving in the different locations.
  • [01:56:12.54] SPEAKER 1: Was there any places that you went where the numbers of those rates were surprising or anything, or was it--
  • [01:56:17.79] RUTH CAREY: Well, what was always clear is that poor people have poorer health statistics than people who have access to medical care. And in some of the racially segregated communities, the folks who were poor and racially segregated, the statistics were worse for them. And I don't know-- I don't keep up on those statistics now that I'm retired, but I know that there's still an impact on health.
  • [01:56:55.30] In fact, I read an article on one of my public health journals just last week that said that-- do you know what income disparity means? Does that mean anything to you? The 1% that has the most money in the culture.
  • [01:57:10.15] SPEAKER 1: We were just talking about in one of our classes, actually.
  • [01:57:11.56] RUTH CAREY: OK. And then those who don't have adequate income at all. When that's-- the further the disparity, the worse the health of the people at the top and the people at the bottom. And this was a researched study that they did. I was very surprised at that. I certainly understand--
  • [01:57:28.76] SPEAKER 1: So even the 1% too?
  • [01:57:31.17] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. Yes. The wider the disparity, the more it affects the health status of both groups.
  • [01:57:38.34] SPEAKER 1: That's interesting.
  • [01:57:39.55] RUTH CAREY: Who would have guessed? Not I.
  • [01:57:41.61] SPEAKER 1: Wow. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
  • [01:57:45.76] RUTH CAREY: I think it's stress at the top, worrying about the money.
  • [01:57:49.55] SPEAKER 1: And they get so carried away sometimes with all the money and stuff. How did you come to live in your current residence?
  • [01:57:56.95] RUTH CAREY: Oh, that's an interesting story. We live in co-housing. I don't know if I told you that. Do you know what co-housing is? No, OK. It's a kind of community that started in Norway, Denmark, and then has slowly moved into this country as well. It's people who want to live in community, meaning know each other, share whatever together. And so there was a-- when we came back from the south-- when we were in Antioch where my husband was the president, we moved back here. We learned from a friend that he was part of helping build a co-housing community out on-- off of West Jackson.
  • [01:58:40.99] And the concept is that you can renovate old buildings, or you can build new buildings, all of which are in a geographic kind of arrangement that means you're going to know your neighbors. There are nine buildings in our co-housing community, and each one of them has between two and five units in each building, and they're on 3 acres of land. We own 20 acres, but the buildings are all on 3 acres. And then we have 10 acres of woods, and we have a prairie that we've restored. And there are some ponds there, woods at the swim club on the west of us.
  • [01:59:21.80] And there are 40 units there, 40 units of housing. And there are internal walkways, but they're not for cars. And so the cars are in the parking lot or in the garage building that's in the parking lot. And so those walkways are safe for the children to play. It's a multigenerational community. And so the little ones or the pets or whoever can safely use those internal walkways.
  • [01:59:49.84] We have some shared meals once or twice a week. We have a community meeting every month to make the decisions on how we want to do whatever we want to do. The houses are condo-style, but we don't live with the condo rules that say you can't do this in your garden, you can't-- all the things have to be the same if you're in a condo. We have a lot of flexibility. I have both a flower garden and a vegetable garden, one in the front, one in the back of our unit.
  • [02:00:19.66] And the children even know everybody in the community. They know who lives where. I mean, after they're age four. And there are about 100 people, maybe a little over 100 people, who live there. And then, since we have built ours, there are two more co-housing communities just beyond us. Ours was the first in Michigan, and now there are more than that. And they're all over the country. If you're interested at all and you put in "co-housing" into a browser-- if you put in "Sunward co-housing," you'll get ours because that's the name of ours. So it's--
  • [02:00:59.83] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [02:01:00.79] RUTH CAREY: --well- known now and there are lots of them.
  • [02:01:02.68] SPEAKER 1: I think that sounds really nice, but how do you feel about living there?
  • [02:01:05.26] RUTH CAREY: I really like being there. And the reason I do is there's so much opportunity for relationships. And you can do them as deeply or as shallowly as you want. But I have some good friends who live there. My husband has a little more trouble with it because he has studied organizations and he knows a lot about organizations. And we sometimes stumble along as an organization, so he can be a little impatient with that. But he's very willing to be there and--
  • [02:01:37.96] SPEAKER 1: But overall, you guys both are very happy that--
  • [02:01:39.18] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, we do. Yeah, it's a good place to be.
  • [02:01:44.27] SPEAKER 1: So this is the next section about popular culture [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:01:48.78] RUTH CAREY: Which I'm not very good at.
  • [02:01:50.77] SPEAKER 1: So can you describe any of the popular music of your time as an adult?
  • [02:01:56.20] RUTH CAREY: Well, I really liked Pete Seeger. You guys probably don't even know his name.
  • [02:02:01.45] SPEAKER 1: I recognize his name.
  • [02:02:02.66] RUTH CAREY: Do you?
  • [02:02:03.17] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [02:02:03.64] RUTH CAREY: He died about a year ago now. And he's a folk singer. And he was a protest folk singer, and not always protest, but he really wrote and sang songs that talked about the cultural difficulties of our society. And he thought war was not a good idea. And so there were a lot of his songs that touched me deeply. And do you know Arlo Guthrie? No?
  • [02:02:29.50] [LAUGHS]
  • [02:02:30.38] He's another folk singer that followed in his father's footsteps. Woody Guthrie was his father. Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie sang all over this country. And that kind of music was really important to me. In my recent years, my son is in like three or four different bands here in town, and he's a percussionist. And he and one of the bands he's in just made an LP vinyl record. Did I ever tell you that?
  • [02:02:59.39] SPEAKER 1: No.
  • [02:02:59.81] RUTH CAREY: No? Well, who makes LP vinyl records these days? But it's coming back. I was surprised at that. But I even saw a catalog the other day that has turntables for sale.
  • [02:03:09.94] [LAUGHS]
  • [02:03:10.43] SPEAKER 1: What? Really?
  • [02:03:11.42] RUTH CAREY: Yes. So I go to a lot of his shows. And he plays-- his bands play contemporary or-- I don't even know how to classify them. But they're not folk. One of the bands as a rock band. I don't go to that one.
  • [02:03:29.08] [LAUGHS]
  • [02:03:31.97] But I go to the others. I grew up in the church, and so that's not pop music, but the music of the church was really important to me. And I know loads and loads of songs that were part of the church music. Other pop culture I was not really ever a part of, so I can't say very much about it. But music is really important to me. I have a lot of CDs and a lot of LPs that I've kept over the years I really do enjoy. I play my son's record about every other day because I like it so much.
  • [02:04:05.24] SPEAKER 1: That's awesome. But do you remember any clothing or hairstyles of the time or other styles?
  • [02:04:12.60] RUTH CAREY: Well, I moved through the time when they used to have beehive hairdos. You probably don't even know what that means. But they would tease the hair. You know what that means? They would back-comb it so that there was a lot of bouffant kind of stuff. And I was glad when that went away. My hair is naturally curly, and so I never really had to do anything to it. Wash it and let it dry. But that was a real fad when I was probably in my 40s, 30s and 40s. I don't follow styles very much, so I'm not real knowledgeable.
  • [02:04:51.52] SPEAKER 1: What about some of the slang terms or phrases or words that--
  • [02:04:55.33] RUTH CAREY: You asked me about that last time. I have not kept up with those because my kids aren't home. When my kids were home, they used to use words that I'd have to ask them what they meant. But later, I didn't.
  • [02:05:09.21] SPEAKER 2: Do you remember any of the words they asked you about-- or that you had to ask them about?
  • [02:05:13.66] RUTH CAREY: Well, I remember I told you last time that the word keen was used for anything that was-- what would the word now be?
  • [02:05:23.32] SPEAKER 2: Cool?
  • [02:05:24.10] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I see the word rad. Is that a word that's used now?
  • [02:05:28.48] SPEAKER 2: Rad?
  • [02:05:29.86] RUTH CAREY: What is it? R-A--
  • [02:05:30.82] SPEAKER 2: Rad, R-A-D.
  • [02:05:31.57] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, R-A-D. So I can't even--
  • [02:05:36.61] SPEAKER 2: We don't use those words.
  • [02:05:38.41] RUTH CAREY: You don't use those words, OK. There is something about-- well, it's after I was retired, because it was after we both retired that we moved into this co-housing community. And I want to tell you about my prison work.
  • [02:05:58.32] SPEAKER 1: Oh, yeah. I think--
  • [02:06:00.95] RUTH CAREY: Will you get to that?
  • [02:06:02.77] SPEAKER 1: Why don't you just tell us about it now? Because the next part--
  • [02:06:04.56] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE]
  • [02:06:06.27] SPEAKER 1: We should wait for the bell.
  • [02:06:08.68] SPEAKER 4: Do we have time?
  • [02:06:10.13] SPEAKER 1: I think-- isn't it 32? I'll go check. Can you [INAUDIBLE]? Because the next part is more about your children and your family life and stuff like that. So maybe while we're on the topic about work and stuff you can-- or what do you think?
  • [02:06:33.61] RUTH CAREY: I'll do whenever you like.
  • [02:06:35.89] SPEAKER 1: Should we just-- should we do the prison stuff now and then talk about her family?
  • [02:06:40.50] SPEAKER 2: 36 and 41.
  • [02:06:41.69] SPEAKER 4: 36 [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:06:42.65] RUTH CAREY: Oh, OK. Oh, we have four minutes?
  • [02:06:45.66] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [02:06:46.73] RUTH CAREY: I'll do whatever you want me to do.
  • [02:06:49.33] SPEAKER 1: What do you guys think? Because the next parts are all about her family. So that's while we're on the work topic should we--
  • [02:06:56.20] SPEAKER 2: Yeah. Is that a--
  • [02:06:59.09] SPEAKER 4: I just don't want us to run out of time.
  • [02:07:01.23] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. That's the only thing, because the bells are--
  • [02:07:04.85] SPEAKER 2: Well, we can always pick up later.
  • [02:07:07.35] SPEAKER 1: OK, yes.
  • [02:07:08.93] RUTH CAREY: OK. In 2000-- in 2000 actually, I got in the mail a solicitation. We're on everybody's "give us money" list. And this one was one asking for money for an organization headquartered in Philadelphia that had volunteers visiting prisoners in federal prisons, not state prisons. And I gave them a contribution. And they also said, if you want to know more about us, check here. So I did and send it back to them.
  • [02:07:38.54] And right away, their recruiter was on the phone with me and told me about this organization, which was founded in 1968 during the Vietnam War because there were a lot of young men who wouldn't register for the draft, or if they'd registered, they wouldn't fight in the war because it was against their moral values. And so then they got put in prison.
  • [02:08:01.41] And so some Quaker-- it was a Quaker man and a Quaker woman who were visiting them in prison. And other prisoners began to want visits too, people who weren't conscientious objectors. And so they knew they couldn't do this forever, and so they formed this organization called prisoner visitation and support. And they wanted volunteers who wanted to visit in federal prisons.
  • [02:08:28.46] So we have about-- right now, we have about 350 visitors all across the country in federal prisons. And after I was oriented and checked out by the FBI, which you have to be if you're going to do this work, then I began to visit in Milan at the Milan Federal Prison there. And I've been doing it ever since. I go every month, and I follow the same men as long as they're in the prison if they want me to come.
  • [02:08:56.15] And they always are the ones who initiate it. They either have been in another prison and they come and let the Philadelphia office know, I want a [INAUDIBLE] visitor. Or they hear it from another inmate and they say, oh, I'd like that too. So if they ask it in any way, then we try to pick them up. There are five of us now that are going into Milan prison. And one of the men I see right now I've been seeing for about eight years.
  • [02:09:23.18] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [02:09:23.84] RUTH CAREY: And he's going to get out in '18, 2018. So he said to me the other day, he said, I know how old you are, and I know how old you're going to be when I get out, and you're still going to be coming to see me when I leave. But it's very interesting work because the men are-- they're in for a whole variety of reasons, which I don't even care with their reasons are because that's not my job. My job is to be a friend to them.
  • [02:09:53.33] And so I go on a monthly basis, and I visit with each one of the men I see for about an hour. And right now, I'm seeing four prisoners. And the other people have less because they're newer people, but they're visiting men as well. And some of the stories they've told me-- this man that I just mentioned. South Side of Chicago is where he grew up on the street. And he had a family, but he was out selling on the street, selling drugs, when he was nine because all the older men in his family were already in prison on drug charges. And so he was trying to get money to help his mother and all this kind of stuff.
  • [02:10:35.62] [BELL RINGING]
  • [02:10:37.87] SPEAKER 1: We should wait.
  • [02:10:38.39] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, we'll wait just till the next one.
  • [02:10:40.66] SPEAKER 1: That scared me. I was like, whoa.
  • [02:10:42.96] SPEAKER 2: It was so loud for me.
  • [02:10:45.14] SPEAKER 1: Oh, yeah. Oh my God. You hear what it sounds like?
  • [02:10:48.79] RUTH CAREY: It sounds awful?
  • [02:10:49.97] SPEAKER 1: No, it doesn't sound that bad. It's just weird.
  • [02:10:52.74] RUTH CAREY: How long before they do it again?
  • [02:10:55.10] SPEAKER 1: Five minutes, right?
  • [02:10:56.13] RUTH CAREY: Oh, I'll wait. I'll put it in when they're close. 41?
  • [02:10:58.67] SPEAKER 2: Oh, you don't have to listen to it with the bell. Everything sounds [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:03.71] RUTH CAREY: Oh, my. What is all that humming?
  • [02:11:07.69] SPEAKER 2: It's the pipes.
  • [02:11:09.52] RUTH CAREY: Oh, for heaven's sake. You don't even hear it when you don't have these things on.
  • [02:11:12.33] SPEAKER 1: Can I listen?
  • [02:11:13.56] SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
  • [02:11:16.25] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:17.24] SPEAKER 1: You should--
  • [02:11:18.26] SPEAKER 2: Oh, that is-- oh my God.
  • [02:11:21.48] [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:11:23.48] That is-- I didn't even know. The humming is weird.
  • [02:11:26.55] SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:28.34] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:30.26] SPEAKER 2: Buzz? Interesting.
  • [02:11:36.19] RUTH CAREY: What are you doing, Naheem?
  • [02:11:40.09] SPEAKER 4: It definitely sounds kind of weird, but on the video, you can't hear it. When you're editing, you can't hear the humming noises.
  • [02:11:45.34] RUTH CAREY: Oh, OK.
  • [02:11:46.15] SPEAKER 4: So I don't know [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:47.25] SPEAKER 1: Do you think I can do it without the boom poll?
  • [02:11:50.72] SPEAKER 4: Maybe.
  • [02:11:51.70] SPEAKER 1: Because I don't want to hold it anymore. It's heavy.
  • [02:11:57.05] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:11:58.47] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE]. So I'll probably re-ask this when we're filming again, but have been prisoners that you've talked to that have been in there for crazy things that they haven't-- or have any of them been wrongly [AUDIO OUT] or something like that? Or are they all-- or they believe they're innocent?
  • [02:12:18.78] RUTH CAREY: Well, the men that I see haven't ever told me, I didn't do anything, I shouldn't be here. This prison that I go to is a low-security prison. I think it's more likely at a penitentiary level or at a higher security that that kind of thing would happen. This doesn't need to be on our video, but I'll tell you about this. There's a man right now, his name is Bryan Stevenson, and wrote a book called Just Mercy. And he's an African-American lawyer who formed an organization called Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. And his concern was the innocent people on death row. He's gotten 154 people innocent off of death row since he began to do his work.
  • [02:13:02.21] SPEAKER 1: What?
  • [02:13:02.54] SPEAKER 2: That's amazing.
  • [02:13:03.17] RUTH CAREY: Yeah.
  • [02:13:04.07] SPEAKER 2: That's insane that--
  • [02:13:04.81] RUTH CAREY: It's very sad.
  • [02:13:05.10] SPEAKER 2: --all of them were on there.
  • [02:13:06.36] RUTH CAREY: And they're almost all African American.
  • [02:13:08.87] SPEAKER 2: Oh my god.
  • [02:13:09.90] RUTH CAREY: And he set this up in Alabama, which is where lots of racism continues to happen. But he was arguing a case before the US Supreme Court last week, so he was in The New York Times. I was so surprised because I had just read his book, and I thought, oh, I know who that is. So there's lots of injustice that goes on in the justice system, sometimes based on poverty, sometimes based on race. So that all needs to change. It's one of the reasons-- well, I'll tell you this when we start again. One of the reasons I do it, but I'll go into that. Another minute and a half.
  • [02:13:51.03] SPEAKER 1: I also want to ask about the quality of the prisoners' lives.
  • [02:13:54.31] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I'll talk to you about that too.
  • [02:13:58.41] SPEAKER 1: And then the next part, we kind of have a lot. This will go by fast, about your family and stuff, what you guys--
  • [02:14:05.70] RUTH CAREY: Where they are now you mean? What they're doing now?
  • [02:14:06.99] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, what do you guys like to do together for fun. And then, the last part will be interesting about talking about wisdom and what you're most proud of and what advice you would give to our generation and stuff.
  • [02:14:17.06] RUTH CAREY: Oh, my.
  • [02:14:17.92] SPEAKER 1: So you can start thinking about that now.
  • [02:14:20.47] RUTH CAREY: Oh, OK.
  • [02:14:24.37] SPEAKER 1: Is it so loud?
  • [02:14:25.67] SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
  • [02:14:26.38] SPEAKER 1: That's actually cool. Hey, Mia. How are you? Did you guys use this for your competition thing?
  • [02:14:35.08] SPEAKER 2: No, but we did [INAUDIBLE]. It also didn't sound good at all. It sounded terrible.
  • [02:14:42.42] SPEAKER 1: We used our phone for so long.
  • [02:14:45.03] SPEAKER 2: For what?
  • [02:14:45.68] SPEAKER 1: For some of our video competition, we used our phone.
  • [02:14:48.86] SPEAKER 2: For one scene, we were trying to do a party scene.
  • [02:14:53.01] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:14:55.01] SPEAKER 2: Well, no, we had a few people. But we wanted it be dark, so we used-- we turn off the lights and put the flashlight of my phone right here.
  • [02:15:05.25] SPEAKER 1: Oh. That's actually smart, though.
  • [02:15:06.93] SPEAKER 2: Yeah. One scene it looked really good, and then another scene we did, we couldn't see anything, so we had to edit it a bunch, and now it doesn't look that great.
  • [02:15:16.20] SPEAKER 1: I'm kind of over the money prize, honestly. I don't-- at first, I was really excited, but--
  • [02:15:19.89] SPEAKER 2: [INAUDIBLE] first place.
  • [02:15:21.39] [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:15:21.82] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Now our thing is not going to--
  • [02:15:25.07] RUTH CAREY: You guys are really learning some interesting stuff, aren't you?
  • [02:15:28.06] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. This is a great class.
  • [02:15:29.88] SPEAKER 2: I look forward to this class more than any other class.
  • [02:15:32.67] RUTH CAREY: Really?
  • [02:15:33.43] SPEAKER 2: All my other classes are so hard this year, and this one's so fun.
  • [02:15:36.20] [BELL RINGING]
  • [02:15:37.63] SPEAKER 1: So loud. How many times does it ring?
  • [02:15:45.95] SPEAKER 2: I swear it was--
  • [02:15:47.87] SPEAKER 1: That's the bell for people being late to lunch.
  • [02:15:51.48] [LAUGHTER]
  • [02:15:54.35] RUTH CAREY: OK. I was telling you about the men that I see and the stories they sometimes tell me. Some of them-- I remember one in particular. After I'd been visiting him for about maybe six months, he said to me, you're the first person in my life who's done what you said you would do. You come here every month. I mean, I come here every month. And for him, that was a really big deal.
  • [02:16:19.73] And he had had a very traumatic childhood. Person who raised him beat him. And I just thought to myself, why wouldn't he be in prison? What chance did he have? I have one prisoner who was a fund-raiser for all the Democratic candidates you can think of-- Clintons, George McGovern, Jerry Brown in California, the governor out there. And his is a financial whatever. I don't know what he did. I don't care what he did.
  • [02:16:52.73] But he knows an immense amount about politics. So it's interesting to talk to him. In the 2012 election, he accurately predicted which candidate would win the state in all but one state. So he's just really not only smart, but very experienced in making those kind of judgments. So they're very interesting people. I have a man who's 71 or 72 years old who is a really good musician. He plays violin, organ, piano. He told me he plays 15 instruments, which I believe him.
  • [02:17:32.27] And he and one other prisoner, who can play classical piano, have put on a concert for the prison population, violin and piano . And he said to me, when I pick up my violin, I'm not in this prison anymore. I am somewhere else. And he said, what I hope is that that happens for the men who listen to us when we do the concert. And he said that he's had some feedback that that actually has happened for a few of them. They just go somewhere else. They're not in those walls and those locked gates and razor wire.
  • [02:18:09.06] He learned how to build organs because he worked for an organ company on the east coast. Excuse me.
  • [02:18:15.87] SPEAKER 1: Would you like water?
  • [02:18:17.81] RUTH CAREY: Probably be a good idea. Then I won't cough on video.
  • [02:18:23.65] SPEAKER 4: We have bottles somewhere, don't we?
  • [02:18:25.63] SPEAKER 1: I think it's-- it should be-- sorry. [INAUDIBLE]. Oh, I thinks it's over here actually.
  • [02:18:33.11] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE].
  • [02:18:35.48] SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE] .
  • [02:18:38.33] RUTH CAREY: Thank you very much. So he has built organs in churches. And then, if they've needed to be moved, he has gone in, taken it apart, labeled every piece. Then it gets transported to the other place. Then he has to put it back together again, which I just think is awesome.
  • [02:18:56.84] SPEAKER 2: That takes-- that's hard, for sure.
  • [02:19:00.39] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. No, exactly. Thinking about how had to take it apart and then--
  • [02:19:03.57] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, put it back together. Plus be able to play once--
  • [02:19:06.95] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. That's a whole nother--
  • [02:19:08.72] RUTH CAREY: Yeah.
  • [02:19:11.79] SPEAKER 2: Did any of your conversations with the prisoners, like the first times you visited them, was that ever awkward, or did you not really know what to talk about?
  • [02:19:21.15] RUTH CAREY: Yes.
  • [02:19:21.97] [LAUGHS]
  • [02:19:23.21] I don't feel that way now, but when I first began, I'd never been in prison to visit anybody. And so I went in with a person who was already visiting there. So that made it a little more comfortable. I wasn't just by myself. But when you go in, you have to go through a metal detector first, and then they take you through a gate that automatically-- a metal gate that automatically opens and that automatically closes. And you can only go where the officer then takes you.
  • [02:19:50.60] So it's very different from anything I'd ever experienced. And it was helpful to sit with another visitor and watch how they interviewed or-- it's not really an interview, it's a conversation-- the men that she was seeing. And so then, when I went on my own, I was a little edgy. Am I going to know what to talk about? Is the person going to want to talk to me? But it has gone very well. And they're very grateful. And they tell me that.
  • [02:20:23.00] In fact, one of them, the man who's the musician, said to me when he came out maybe a couple months, ago, he said, by the way, somebody's sitting with me at lunch said, tell Miss Ruth when you go out there that we're grateful for what she does here. And he isn't even seeing a visitor. But the men who are seen take back to the prisoners that aren't getting visitors what it's like for them.
  • [02:20:47.66] So it feels like it's-- and I also know that it reduces recidivism. You know what recidivism is? It means it means how many people who get out of prison and then go back again, which is a pretty high percentage. But for those who have visits of this sort, not just me but other people, it reduces the recidivism by about 30%.
  • [02:21:09.01] SPEAKER 1: Wow.
  • [02:21:10.79] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. So I think it makes a difference in their lives. And they tell their families about me and take pictures. We can have our picture taken with a prisoner. They send those to their mother or whoever. So I know that for them, it's a significant piece of their lives. They look forward to it, because every time I come, they have a month less to serve in the prison. Do you know what I mean?
  • [02:21:32.49] SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
  • [02:21:32.90] RUTH CAREY: Because they're--
  • [02:21:34.76] SPEAKER 1: They're marks how much longer it is.
  • [02:21:37.22] RUTH CAREY: That's right, how much longer they have.
  • [02:21:38.99] SPEAKER 1: That must be the most rewarding feeling for you too.
  • [02:21:41.89] RUTH CAREY: It really is. It's an important thing that's a part of my life on a regular basis. And the reason I went-- I started to tell you this when we were off camera-- Is because I felt for a long time that the people in prison are throwaway people in our culture. People don't really care about them. They deserve to be there. I don't care how long they're there. And that doesn't seem just to me, because 80% of them are coming back into the community. So we need to pay attention.
  • [02:22:16.76] And so that's why I initially was interested in doing it. And now, it's an important piece of my life to be part of that. I saw an interview of this guy that I mentioned, Bryan Stevenson, who wrote Just Mercy. I saw Oprah interview him about this work that he's doing getting people off death row. And he's also working with children. I don't know, there's like 30 states where children can be tried as adults. Michigan is one of them. And they can be put in adult prisons. So anyway, he's really trying to change that and work with the laws.
  • [02:22:51.20] SPEAKER 1: That's insane.
  • [02:22:51.74] RUTH CAREY: Well, he thinks so too. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure I talked about that because it's a significant thing in my retirement to be able to do that work.
  • [02:23:00.87] SPEAKER 1: What were some of the living conditions and stuff of the prisons?
  • [02:23:04.25] RUTH CAREY: Well, the one I'm in, it's not usually a dangerous prison because these are low-security prisoners. If I were visiting in a penitentiary, there violence happens and people get hurt and that kind of stuff. But in this one, that's unusual. If you have to go to what they call special housing, which is like where you're in a cell by yourself and you're locked up 23 hours a day, it's because you've disobeyed an officer or you've been mouthy or maybe you've insulted another person, another prisoner and they complained.
  • [02:23:39.01] SPEAKER 1: Not for like murder.
  • [02:23:39.29] RUTH CAREY: No. Seldom-- seldom does that happen, which it does happen in the higher security prisons. So their complaints usually are about the food, which there've been some reason to complain about the food. But they usually are in a cell with one other person. But there's one unit where it's kind of open, and so they don't really have privacy in their cells. Some of the cells are not air conditioned. This is an old prison. And that's hard this summer. It's been really hard. They have fans, but they don't have air conditioning.
  • [02:24:14.16] And they have medical care. If they don't get adequate medical care, our director, or prisoners visitation support guy in Philadelphia, will call the warden if the prisoner wants him to do that and feels he's not getting adequate care. But several of mine have been taken out to go to St. Joe's hospital or wherever to get the care that they need. So it messes up sometimes, but for the most part, I think they're getting care when they need it.
  • [02:24:42.06] SPEAKER 1: Oh, sorry.
  • [02:24:43.08] RUTH CAREY: That's OK.
  • [02:24:43.47] SPEAKER 1: Are you allowed to ever bring them stuff?
  • [02:24:45.08] RUTH CAREY: Oh, I'm not allowed. I can't take them anything, and they can't give me anything. I had a funny story. Oh, quite a few years ago now, one of the prisoners I was seeing loved doing bead work. And so he made me a bracelet with my name on it in beads. He brought it into the visiting room. And I said, you know that I cannot take that, and you know I'm not allowed to take anything from you. And if I do, I might not be able to come back here and see you, and you're going to have to figure out what to do with that thing.
  • [02:25:17.05] So I watched as he left the visiting room, because I see one prisoner and then they call another one. So as he was going out, he went by the waste basket and put it in. I hoped that they didn't search the trash that day because he-- it was a lovely thought, and it was very pretty. He showed it to me. But I would have been in big trouble if I'd taken it.
  • [02:25:41.69] SPEAKER 1: That's--
  • [02:25:42.51] RUTH CAREY: It's sad.
  • [02:25:44.06] SPEAKER 2: That's such a sweet thing for him to do.
  • [02:25:45.42] RUTH CAREY: It was. It absolutely was. And it was a statement about how important the visits are to him.
  • [02:25:50.32] SPEAKER 1: Was he said that he had to throw it away?
  • [02:25:51.96] RUTH CAREY: Yeah, he was.
  • [02:25:53.52] SPEAKER 2: I would be sad.
  • [02:25:54.81] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I felt sorry for him.
  • [02:25:58.68] SPEAKER 1: We only have like 10 minutes left. We have a lot more questions.
  • [02:26:03.20] SPEAKER 2: Will we have a fourth--
  • [02:26:05.56] SPEAKER 1: No. This is the last one ever.
  • [02:26:08.24] RUTH CAREY: She said when she came in, this is not your final session. What did she mean when she said that?
  • [02:26:12.29] SPEAKER 1: Well, there's one more, but that's a--
  • [02:26:15.74] SPEAKER 4: Specific one.
  • [02:26:16.31] SPEAKER 1: Specific. We're going to go to one of your life and make the whole video about that.
  • [02:26:23.37] RUTH CAREY: OK.
  • [02:26:23.88] SPEAKER 2: OK, so then really fast, I'll give you a bunch of the questions, and then you can just-- so first you can tell us about your family and what they're doing and what you guys like to do for fun together when they all come and visit, and any special events or traditions. And then, if you could tell us what were some important social and historical events that had the greatest impact in your entire life. And then also, the last part is, what are you most proud of? What would you say has changed the most from the time you were our age to now, and then any advice that you'd like to give out?
  • [02:26:56.66] RUTH CAREY: Oh, my goodness. Well, I'll tell you about my kids. My daughter's married, has two boys-- they're 11 and 14-- who I love dearly. My son has a partner that he's had for probably 10 or 11 years now, and they're pretty monogamous. She lives-- she works in Detroit. So three days a week she's down here with him and goes to work there, and then on the weekends she goes to her house, which is up by Tawas, in from the thumb of Michigan, a little bit in. So they have their separate and together lives, which suits them really well.
  • [02:27:32.45] My daughter just got made the president and CEO of Star Commonwealth, which is a non-for-profit social service agency that serves children who are in trouble of some sort. And their mission statement is there's no such thing as a bad child. And that's how they operate their organization. She's been there six years, I think, and was just promoted to that position because the other person was retiring. It's a huge job, but she's bright and she's skillful and has a big heart, and so she'll do the job just fine.
  • [02:28:08.67] SPEAKER 1: Gets it from her mother.
  • [02:28:09.44] RUTH CAREY: Oh. I don't ever claim that. The 11-year-old is quite an ice hockey player. And I watched him last week. And he loves it, and he's a good skater. The 14-year-old loves horses, and he has-- horses have been kind of a therapy for him. He had a school anxiety for a while, and so he had to be home schooled for a little while. But the horses have just made a significant difference for him, and he's now back in school and he's doing really well.
  • [02:28:41.94] So they live nearby, and they're coming for Thanksgiving. And while they're there, we will laugh and talk and eat turkey and have a nice time. I love it when they come because the boys are very-- well, they're wonderful. My son, as I told you, plays in about three or four bands. But to pay his mortgage, he's self-employed as a-- he's not a CPA, but he does payroll accounting and taxes for small businesses here in town and for not-for-profits, like the Ypsi District Library, and some senior housing center. So they're both employed and doing well. I love him to pieces. I just do. They're just-- they have my whole heart almost. My husband has some of it, but they have most of it.
  • [02:29:34.43] In the past, the children and I have gone to a B&B and spent a weekend. We haven't done that for a while because they're so involved in the work they do. But I would love to do that again. We love to take walks. So there's been just a lot of enjoyment throughout the years of my retirement and their full-time employment. It's been nice.
  • [02:30:01.80] Now, after I've talked about my children and my family, I forget what the next question is.
  • [02:30:05.62] SPEAKER 1: We can talk about what are you most proud or what you would say has changed the most from the time you were our age to now and any advice.
  • [02:30:13.04] RUTH CAREY: OK. I think what's changed most from then, when I was your age, till now is technology. I already talked enough about that, that I don't think anything else in the culture-- well, yes there is. There's a very significant change. People your age and a little older than you I see as so much more tolerant of difference than people that are my age, like same sex marriages or people who have whatever difference from the mainstream culture.
  • [02:30:49.23] It seems to me that you people and the ones that are college age and a little older are so much more willing to be inclusive of those folks. And I just think that's awesome. I am so grateful that that's the case. There's been just so much injustice and oppression of people who are different. We're still getting it. The governor declared yesterday he's not going to let any more Syrian refugees into Michigan, and a whole bunch of other governors are doing the same thing, which is just not-- well, whatever. I don't mean to go there.
  • [02:31:18.57] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, we're so lucky to live in such an open place where you don't have to-- it's almost-- I wouldn't say cool, but it's-- I don't know how to say it, but it's also a good thing to be different. No one is mean or-- everyone supports you no matter what.
  • [02:31:34.73] RUTH CAREY: Yeah. I'm really grateful that that's the case.
  • [02:31:36.29] SPEAKER 2: Yeah, everyone's just proud of who they are.
  • [02:31:38.54] RUTH CAREY: Yeah It's great.
  • [02:31:39.51] SPEAKER 1: There's no one that has to hide--
  • [02:31:41.49] RUTH CAREY: Because they're different, yeah. So that difference is just awesome to me. We've got three minutes. Advice.
  • [02:31:51.12] SPEAKER 2: We have till-- 12:06 is when the bell rings.
  • [02:31:53.01] RUTH CAREY: Oh, do you? Oh, good.
  • [02:31:54.15] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, and then we have to clean up this stuff.
  • [02:31:56.11] SPEAKER 4: Let me try to do that before everyone is--
  • [02:31:58.29] SPEAKER 1: The whole rush comes back.
  • [02:32:00.09] RUTH CAREY: Don't worry about that. We'll make it OK. I think, from my perspective-- I'm 78 years old. I have a few more years, but I don't have too many more. That I think one of the best things a person can do is to follow their heart in terms of what they feel called to do, what they're-- it's what they're interested in, but not just in their head. In their head too, but also in their heart, because you don't go too far wrong if you're following that as your leading to what you ought to be about.
  • [02:32:40.33] So that would be one piece of advice. I have some pretty strongly held values that peace is a whole lot more important than war, and that trying to be aware of where you might make a difference in terms of in your own little relationships-- and it sounds like this high school is a good mentor for that, that you can decrease conflict and increase connections with each other. I think that's how the world becomes safer. Vote.
  • [02:33:25.53] [LAUGHS]
  • [02:33:28.32] When you get old enough, vote, because it really can make a significant difference in what happens in the larger culture. I don't think I'll go further than that in terms of giving you advice because I never-- I have kind of a maxim that I use for myself, and that is don't give advice unless it's asked for. And you did ask me for it, so it was OK. But I really-- that's another way I operate in relationships, is if somebody asks me for advice, I usually say to them, what I can do is tell you my own experience. I can't tell you what you should do. So I think that works pretty well too in terms of arriving at peaceful kinds of relationships with people.
  • [02:34:13.89] SPEAKER 2: Well thank you so much.
  • [02:34:14.96] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, thank you so much--
  • [02:34:15.92] RUTH CAREY: You're welcome.
  • [02:34:16.36] SPEAKER 1: --for sharing all of that.
  • [02:34:17.44] RUTH CAREY: Well, I'm
  • [02:34:17.71] SPEAKER 1: And perfectly so.
  • [02:34:19.63] RUTH CAREY: I'm really so grateful for the three of you, because--