Ethel Ruth Hastings

Ethel Ruth Hastings, third of the eight children of Mary Lena Brown and Frank Opal Hastings, was born 1 September 1900 in Martintown, Green County, WI, the village founded by her great-grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. Like many of the women in her immediate family, she was known by her middle name.

Through most of Ruth’s childhood, the family’s base of operations was Martintown. However, Ruth also became acquainted with DeQueen, Sevier County, AR on the frequent visits made there to visit her grandma Emma and her mother’s sisters Ethel, Lulu, and Ada. Also, the family moved about on occasion to rented accommodations due to the logistics of her father’s job with Illinois Central Railroad. The longest example of this was a year or so spent in Dilly, Vernon County, WI, where Ruth’s brother Ernest, sixth of the eight children, was born in the fall of 1907. After the sojourn in Dilly, the family returned to Martintown for the long haul, though not to the same house. In Ruth’s early childhood, the Hastings/Brown family had occupied one of the legacy houses of the Martin estate on the mill side of the Pecatonica River. Their new home was on the other side of the river in the main part of the village.

Some time in her infancy, Ruth contracted polio. The case was mild, the main damage consisting of paralysis in the Achilles tendon of her left leg -- a body part she wasn’t using much at the time because she was had not yet learned to walk. But as she grew, her father became more and more concerned by the way she threw her left leg out to the side with every step when she ran around. Eventually he realized her left leg was shorter than the other. The family consulted a doctor, who decided the cause was a bygone case of polio. There wasn’t much that could be done about the vestigal paralysis -- though Frank Hastings did maintain a habit for years of rubbing Ruth’s foot each evening when he got home from his railroad job -- but the asymmetrical length of the legs was something the doctor thought he could remedy. Ruth’s parents agreed to let him try. The doctor broke bones in Ruth’s foot so that when they healed, the legs would be the same length. He charged a grand total of thirty-five dollars for the procedure. Ruth remained in a cast for several months. Even as an old woman she recalled being carried to Sunday school during her recuperation by her father, and being wheeled around the neighborhood in a red wagon by her older brothers, John and Hap. Alas, when the cast came off, the left leg was still shorter than the right. For the rest of her life, Ruth compensated by wearing high-topped footwear for support, and by stuffing the toe of her left shoe to make her foot ride a little high. This regimen served her well. She would sometimes experience sharp pains in the left leg during the night, and her heel would sometimes bother her. Another lingering effect of the polio was that she often had trouble sleeping. However, Ruth was aware of how relatively lucky she was. One of the instances when this was brought home was when she was an adolescent. Her aunt Lulu’s husband Edgar Seay contracted the disease. His body was so severely affected it could not thrive. After two years of suffering, he died.

Aside from the interval in Dilly, Ruth received her elementary-school education at the old Martin School. She graduated from Winslow High School as part of the Class of 1917 along with her mother’s much-younger first cousins Ralph Byron Bucher and Clark Fuller Martin, but Winslow High was only a two-year institution at that point. Wanting further education, Ruth went on to Freeport High School in Freeport, Stephenson County, IL and then to Green County Normal School in Monroe, Dane County, WI, where she obtained a teaching credential. She taught at a one-room Wisconsin country school until marrying in her mid-twenties.

Ruth’s husband was Rolland Webster Parsons, who had grown up with her. Rolland, a son of Sheridan C. Parsons and Lucy Webster, had been born 17 November 1899 in Martintown. The couple were joined 26 May 1925 in Freeport. Rolland had also chosen to become a teacher, though he devoted more years to his academic training. He had gone to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he had completed a Bachelor’s and then a Master’s degree. He had then gone on to Boston University, where he had done further graduate work. At the time of the wedding, he was in the early part of a twenty-five year stint as a teacher and principal in Wisconsin public schools.

The couple’s first child, Lois Eileen Parsons, arrived a little short of a year into Rolland and Ruth’s marriage. Unfortunately, the baby survived less than two weeks. Born 4 May 1926, Lois died 17 May 1926, both events occurring in Freeport. It would be a few more years before Ruth and Rolland were able to settle into parenthood. To their joy and relief, their two other kids thrived. They consisted of another daughter, Ruth Elaine Parsons (1930-2020), known as Elaine, and of a son, Ronald John Parsons (1931-1984).

Toward the end of the 1920s Ruth and Rolland moved into a home in Wiota Township, Lafayette County, WI. This was quite near Martintown and Winslow and they maintained steady contact with close kin. In the early 1930s they moved to Windsor, an unincorporated village just north of Madison. This put them a bit father away from their parents but still within easy day-trip range. These circumstances would endure thoughout the Great Depression and World War II years. Rolland taught grades five through eight -- his own offspring being among his students. The school was small enough that he doubled as the janitor.

In 1946, Rolland realized a long-held dream and was able to combine job and religious interests when he became a Professor of Education at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Norfolk County, MA. He would go on to teach at E.N.C. for twenty-five years. Naturally the acceptance of this position meant a dramatic uprooting of the household. Ruth and Rolland would never again live anywhere near the upper Midwest. At first, the couple were based in Quincy itself, and later in the adjacent town of Wollaston. Keeping in touch with other family members was now a challenge, with the exception of Rolland’s sister Maude and family, who also lived in Quincy. This isolation was mitigated by the nature of the academic year. Rolland had summers off. Even with his seasonal sideline career as a house painter, the Parsonses had ample time to schedule trips, and often spent extended intervals back in Wisconsin and Illinois. They were good hosts in return, and quite a number of relatives made their way to Massachusetts. In the case of Ruth’s mother, the logistics were simplified by the free anywhere-in-the-country railroad pass she had been granted as the widow of a longterm Illinois Central Railroad employee. A prime venue for get-togethers was Ruth and Rolland’s vacation house at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

During the Quincy/Wollaston years, Ruth helped her husband run the college bookstore. This put her in contact with nearly the entire student body, and she came to be regarded as a kind of mother figure by many. The family dog, Honey, became an unofficial campus mascot. Honey accompanied Ruth on many a work day, staying behind the counter and tranquilly enduring being patted on the head by dozens and dozens of bookstore customers each week. Ruth kept herself busy not only with the store, but with interests such as Nazarene Church functions, assistance in church missions, gardening (roses in particular), sewing, baking and canning, and as one might expect from someone who ran a bookstore, generous amounts of reading.

Rolland retired in 1971, Ruth in 1972. By then, the couple were in their seventies. Their good health -- polio damage notwithstanding -- had allowed them to remain active. Over the course of the decade, however, mortality increasingly had its way with Rolland. As he became feeble, the couple decided in 1979 to move from Wollaston all the way across the nation to Wenatchee, Chelan County, WA. This allowed them to be near their daughter Elaine and her family.

Rolland went through an extended period of illness before dying 20 August 1983 in a Wenatchee convalescent center. His passing was, as the saying goes, not unexpected. Ruth had also seen the deaths of four of her five brothers. In a sense, that was a natural consequence of her own good health and survival. But the following spring Ruth lost her son Ronald to cancer. That brought with it grief of a different character. Fortunately she did not have to endure the loss of her only remaining child, though she did eventually outlive both sisters. Ruth would in the end spend seventeen years as a widow, and by the time of her demise was known as Washington state’s oldest known polio survivor (as confirmed in 1994 by the Easter Seal Society). (Ruth is ninety-four in the photo at left.)

Members of Ruth’s clan, as part of their missionary work, spent sojourns as far away as Madagascar and Kenya, her own life having inspired the notion that a person could make a new home anywhere if the reason was good enough. Despite said peripatetic tendency among the younger generations, Ruth always had some kin close at hand during her final years. This was an asset, because Ruth reached one hundred years of age, becoming the second descendant of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader to achieve that mark, the first being Albert Frederick Warner, who had turned one hundred in 1984. (To date, the only other one to do so is Edgar William Seay, who got there in 2009. He was a son of Ruth’s uncle who died of polio in 1914.) She was so robust an individual that even a perforated colon suffered in early 1996, when she was over ninety-five years old, could not bring her down. She recovered so well from the emergency surgery that, four months later, she went through a follow-up procedure to, in her words, “be put back the way God made me,” eliminating the need for the colostomy bag she had been temporarily fitted with. Again she quickly healed.

Inevitably, however, “the warranty ran out” and by age ninety-seven she was obliged to move into an assisted-living facility. She took comfort by noting aspects of her new circumstances that were to her liking. For example, her apartment had a deep windowsill with plenty of sunlight, which meant she could bring along some of her treasured African violets, flowers that she had named for her various grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Alas, within another year or two, though, she couldn’t remember those names with any consistency. Nor could she see well enough to properly care for the violets. Which is to say, her eyesight became so bad she could not even watch television, much less read. She was dependent upon Elaine to read to her, a process complicated by hearing loss so severe hearing aids could no longer fully compensate. She could at least remember Elaine, in part because her long-term memory was more stable. She for example recalled the profound happiness she had felt attending services at the Martintown community church when she had been a child. She retained her awareness of her own identity. She was therefore able to enjoy the big party held to celebrate her 100th birthday, an event that drew relatives to Wenatchee from over a thousand miles away.

Ruth passed away 16 April 2001 at Central Washington Hospital. Her remains were placed with those of Rolland in Wenatchee City Cemetery. She had been known as Ruth so resolutely through her life that her death was recorded under the name Ruth Hastings Parsons, without “Ethel” in front.

Descendants of Ethel Ruth Hastings with Rolland Webster Parsons

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