Writing about today's subject carries this writer on such a memory trip that it will be hard to keep out any personal references.
The pleasing subject today is Ruth Crisp. Our memory connection is Appleby. Although she wasn't born there and actually didn't "grow up" there, her time in the little city was so important to the start of her life, those memories are as sweet and fresh as yesterday.
My connection to Appleby was my mother's father, Dr. George Samuels. We visited him in Appleby from our home in Jacksonville. Ruth was busy at that same time living what would become her precious memories. And we both love Nacogdoches for many of the same memories.
So, interview time got a little mixed up with scrapbooks, pictures and exchanging stories of our memories. But Senior Connection articles are on happy, active, busy seniors, and Ruth is a perfect subject. In fact, Ruth's very life is a feature journalist's dream. The stories just pour out of her, as she reminisces.
The fabulous story about Ruth's birth and her arrival in Appleby is that she is a loved adoptee. She arrived in Appleby in 1921 with quite a flourish. She was with her new parents, James and Doris Evans Lang, right from the Dallas orphanage where they had especially selected her. Her father was the Southern Pacific Railroad station agent for Appleby, and many of their friends and neighbors were waiting there that day for the train's arrival to see the new baby. Ruth is still loved and teased as the baby who came in on a train.
Ruth's youngest years were spent in Appleby, then in Linn Flat where her daddy bought a farm after he retired. She graduated from Trawick High School and then came in to Nacogdoches for business school. She roomed with a friend at Crisp Hotel and got acquainted with "Granma Crisp," the hotel owner. One day, Granma Crisp brought her grandson to pick peas at Ruth's daddy's farm. It was Fred Crisp. It must have been love at first sight, apparently for both of them. Both always called him her "pea patch love." They were married in 1938 and spent their "honeymoon" at the Crisp Hotel. Their first "electrical job" together was that night when they walked back over to Main Street for Fred to turn on the city's Christmas lights, a duty Fred had each night with his job as an electrical assistant for a local company. Ruth said her life in the electrical field began on her wedding day, and it was the beginning of her love for Nacogdoches and its people.
After a few years in Japan during World War II, Fred returned, and they decided to go back into the electrical business, Fred's Electric Service, and to quote Ruth, "the rest is history." They operated the business in their home for many years, having four children and not wanting to leave them in the care of others. The children attended Nacogdoches schools and SFA. The girls became teachers, and the boys decided on the electrical business, as well.
In 1984, she and Fred retired from their own business and joined their son's business, Kim's Electrical Contractors. Ruth continued working there after Fred died, and she retired in 2001.
Her connection to Appleby has never been broken. She has lived no more than 50 miles away from the little city, and now lives one city lot off Appleby Sand Road. Ruth is deeply religious, and it is reflected in her life, her close family, her visions, her love, her garden and her poetry. She says her spiritual journey began at Fredonia Hill Baptist Church in 1942 and "joy unspeakable with my church family."
Writing is a joy for Ruth. Her poetry just pops right onto the paper, any piece she said. Her poetry has been published in two little books — one with more than 300 pages of her poems — collected by family members. Topics for her poems include birthdays, births, especially grandchildren, her new stove, her new swing, her flowers, as well as the bluebird outside the window. Most of the poems reflect her love of family, but her garden, her little house, her friends, and church are right along.
Ruth is an inspiration. We'll now be looking forward to the Nacogdoches scrapbooks as well as the Appleby Bethel Cemetery reunion in late June.
