Ruth Irene (Wildermuth) Ridenour — Eesley

Ruth Irene Wildermuth Ridenour was the eldest of Earl Adam Wildermuth and Sadye Irene Fleming Wildermuth’s five children — the older sister of Robert Earl Wildermuth (Chuck’s grandfather). The other three Wildermuth siblings were Carl Edward Wildermuth (later blind), Norma Jean Wildermuth Gault, and Betty Joan Wildermuth Haddox.

The Tremont Hospital birth

In her own words, from the parallel autobiographical sketch she wrote and appended to Robert Earl’s 1989 memoir:

“It was on a beautiful spring day, 29 April 1922, that I first saw the light as a member of the brand new Earl Adam and Sadye Irene (Fleming) Wildermuth family. At precisely 8 [AM] I came into this world at the Tremont Hospital, Sixth and Montgomery Streets, Marietta…”

The Tremont Hospital at Sixth and Montgomery Streets in Marietta — new to this archive’s geography — was a small downtown Marietta hospital in the early twentieth century. Ruth’s was the first birth in Earl and Sadye’s marriage; Robert Earl would arrive almost exactly two years later in 1924.

She lived through her parents’ apprenticeship-and-machinist years and the move to 413 Harmar Street in 1929, alongside her younger brother Robert Earl and the three younger siblings who followed.

Ruth Irene Wildermuth as an infant, bundled in a rocking chair in a leafy yard; the print is dated 5 July 1922.

Ruth as a baby — the print dated 5 July 1922, when she was about ten weeks old. The earliest image of the first Earl-Adam-Wildermuth child.

The Marietta Telephone Exchange and the war marriage

Ruth worked at the Marietta Telephone Exchange through the war years — the early 1940s, the period when so many young American women filled the local-exchange-operator workforce during World War II.

Her aunt Laverna (Fleming) Raison — her mother Sadye’s sister — played cupid and introduced Ruth to Jack Ridenour. They married 6 May 1943 at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey — the Army’s main East-Coast staging area for the European and CBI theaters — a week before Jack shipped out to the China-India-Burma Theater of World War II. Ruth went back to Marietta and lived as a “warbride ‘widow’” until Jack returned at the end of the war. The marriage opened with the same kind of separation that her cousin-by-marriage Betty Davis’s 1945 wedding to Norm Wolfe would — two years and a generational beat later.

Ruth Wildermuth, at right, with her younger brother Bob — Robert Earl Wildermuth — in his Army uniform, c. 1943–44, on a Marietta lawn; the print is signed "Ruth & Bob."

Ruth with her brother Robert Earl during the war years — the print the family labeled “Ruth & Bob,” and the source of her page portrait.

The next generation

Ruth and Jack had two daughters:

Karen Kay Ridenour, born 8 January 1949 — the same week as her first cousin Terrie Lee Wildermuth (Robert Earl and Dottie’s eldest, b. 13 January 1949 in Oakland, CA). Karen Kay and Terrie were therefore born within five days of each other on opposite sides of the country — the two Wildermuth-side cousins of the same generation.
Marcia Ann Ridenour, born 7 April 1951.

What Ruth’s sketch records

Ruth’s parallel sketch appended to Robert Earl’s 1989 memoir records the family’s life events from her angle:

Sadye Irene (Fleming) Wildermuth died 4 August 1976 of multiple myeloma.
Earl Adam Wildermuth suffered a massive stroke and died 8 December 1977 — “grieving for his dear wife was a major contributing factor.”
Carl (her brother) was blind and lived with their father after Sadye’s death.
Jack Ridenour (her husband) later died of the same multiple myeloma their mother had had — an unusual cluster of the same blood cancer in two close family members of the same generation.

Sources: Ruth Irene Wildermuth Ridenour’s parallel autobiographical sketch, in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir; Dale Eesley / FamilySearch.