Ruth F. Thompson

A memorial service for Ruth F. Thompson, 93, of Scottsbluff, will be held 10:00 A.M., Saturday, December 30, 2006, at WestWay Christian Church in Scottsbluff with Pastor Marshall Smith officiating. Interment has taken place at Fairview Cemetery in Scottsbluff. A memorial has been established to WestWay Christian Church Missions. Tributes of sympathy may be left at www.dugankramer.com Dugan-Kramer Funeral Chapel of Scottsbluff is in charge of the arrangements. Ruth Thompson’s earliest memory was of standing in sunlight that shone through an open door. There’s no telling how young she was when that happened, but it’s a fitting image for a life that was filled with warmth and love. It’s the perfect metaphor for a woman who showed so many people how to stand in the everlasting light of God, until she joined Him in heaven on December 19, 2006. Ruth was a quiet, gentle woman who made a personal commitment to Christ when she was 20. While she had been active in the First Church of God from the time it formed in Scottsbluff, and later was active at West Way, as a Christian she worked for God in everything she did. Sometimes her work was directly for the church, such as picking up children who otherwise couldn’t be at Sunday school or vacation bible school. Even more often, though, Ruth ministered to others simply by loving them, and in doing so she set an example for everyone who came in contact with her. There’s no way to even estimate how many people’s lives she touched, but a few of those kids to whom she gave rides became ministers, and several people have told her oldest son that they credit their own Christianity to Ruth’s influence. Ruth just had a gift for loving. It was something she traced back to the people who first loved her. She was born as Florence Ruth Robinson in Wellsville, Ohio, on Feb. 12, 1913, and was the youngest of Anna Mae and Abraham Lincoln Robinson’s six children. To Mama and Papa, her brothers and sisters she was Ruthie, the beloved baby. She wasn’t pampered; there was always a lot of work around their farm and Ruthie did her share. But she was a beautiful, joyful girl who could get away with making pets of the livestock, teasing her brothers and sneaking up on her family with a camera when they were at their least photogenic. No matter what they were doing -- working in the garden, gathered around a truck talking over the day’s labor – the Robinsons would smile for Ruthie. They gave her perhaps the greatest gift a family can offer when they loved her that way. They let her know just how special she was, in their eyes and in God’s. The knowledge of her own worth gave Ruth a strength of spirit she used all her life. Ruth knew who she was, what she stood for, and no one could shake that. Not even the Social Security Administration, when it tried to issue her a card under the name Florence. She insisted that card should bear the name she’d grown used to, and won. From that time on she was officially Ruth Thompson. Ruth’s early life was full of possibilities and a sense of adventure. While Mama and Papa were strict, they gave her a lot of room to explore her world. Her family moved to Nebraska in 1915 and farmed; when Ruthie wasn’t doing chores she was riding bareback among the hills or along the ditch bank on a retired race horse, which her family had bought to pull their buggy. She was only five the day she met one of the ditch riders on the irrigation canal and he jokingly said he’d race her home. No joke to Ruthie. It must have taken all she had to hold on, and the man was scared half to death that she’d get hurt and he’d be blamed. But she won. As she grew up, Ruth’s sense of freedom and confidence opened possibilities many other girls of that generation didn’t consider. She was the only one of her siblings to graduate high school. For years she wanted to be a pharmacist, and for awhile thought about becoming a missionary. But she found her calling the day she met Howard Thompson. They met at the First Church of God, which had started as Sunday school for six families when Ruth was 12. She was 14 when the Thompson’s moved to town, and she knew from the moment she saw Howard that he was the man she would marry. He proposed seven years later, on the road that was being built up Scotts Bluff National Monument. They were married on Thanksgiving Day -- November 29, 1934 – and their plan was a typical one. Buy a house, have many children, live happily ever after. Not much in life goes according to plan. They did buy a house, then a farm near Morrill. They had their first son, Lyle Stanley, in 1937. But their next child, Howard Stanley, was born on July 5, 1940 and died two days later. Another boy, then two girls were premature and died at birth. Lyla Ruth, born on July 15, 1945, lived one day. Ruth and Howard were hopeful when Jerry Lee, born on Nov. 19, 1948, lived and they decided to try for one more child. But Gale Allen, born on Feb. 15, 1950, lived only three days. Then in January of 1959, Ruth lost Howard to a heart attack. She left the farm several months later when Lyle took it over, moving into Scottsbluff. At 45, she was a widow and a single parent who had lost six children. It would have been easy for anyone in those circumstances to be bitter, but Ruth still saw the blessings in life. Once, an acquaintance asked her how many children she had and she answered without hesitation: “I have eight children, two living.” She said it without bitterness or self-pity. And whenever she looked at or even talked about Lyle and Jerry, her eyes twinkled like Christmas tree lights with joy and pride. Ruth took on the challenge of raising a son alone with typical energy. She sparked and encouraged Jerry’s interests, taking him and his friends on hunting and fishing trips. She’d drop them on Winter or Nine-Mile Creek, drive a mile or so down the road and read in the car while they fished their way to her. Ruth worked first at a café, then at Fairacres rest home before getting a job at the Scottsbluff hospital as a nurse’s aide. She was still there when it became Regional West Medical Center, and worked there about 22 years. Over the years Ruth drove thousands of miles by herself to visit children and grandchildren. She mowed her own grass and loved Mexican food. Fearless. Spirited. Confident. This was Ruth. Her grandchildren remember Ruth as a woman who cared enough to know just what they’d like best and was up for just about anything. It was special staying overnight at Grandma’s because the next day, she’d ask the grandchild just what he or she wanted to do, then do it. Ruth taught her grandson how to catch trout; she hiked with a granddaughter, one day climbing the monument in the windiest weather possible. By the time her youngest great-grandchildren were born, Ruth’s body wasn’t up to those kind of activities. Instead, she taught one of them how to use his first computer. That really was the magic of Ruth Thompson. She knew how valuable she was in the eyes of God; that not only made everything she gave special, but the people to whom she gave it. When she poured out her time, love and attention, the people who received it got a taste of their own potential. Through her, they got a glimpse of how God sees them. Just a few years ago, when talking about her faith, Ruth naturally turned to the importance of love. She said, “love holds families together, holds churches together, it holds nations together.” She is survived by two sons, Lyle (Helen) Thompson of Scottsbluff and Jerry L. (Lori) Thompson of Black Hawk, South Dakota; and four grandchildren; eleven great-grandchildren; and five great-great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband and six children.