Ruth Rue (Rittenhouse) Morris (1933 - 2001)

Born 12 Dec 1933 in Buffalo, Erie, New York, United States

Ancestors

Wife of Raymond Neville Morris — married 23 Jul 1961 in University Christian Church (in a Quaker wedding conducted by Buffalo Quaker Meeting), Buffalo, New York, USA

Descendants

Died 17 Sep 2001 at age 67 in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, Canada

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Corinne Morris [send private message]

Biography

Ruth (Rittenhouse) Morris was a part of the Prison Abolition Movement.

Ruth (Rittenhouse) Morris is Notable.

Ruth (Rittenhouse) Morris is/was a significant Ontarian .

Ruth was a Friend (Quaker)

Ruth Rue Rittenhouse was born December 12th 1933 in Buffalo, New York. She was the youngest of four children of David Shuman Rittenhouse and Cora (Crews) Rittenhouse. She was a lifelong campaigner for social justice.

Her earliest memory was being babysat by her mother's sister, Aunt Mildred, when she was about three. She thought she remembered it because she hadn't been left with someone very often, and didn't know her aunt very well: "however she was a very good aunt & tried her best, & she and uncle Pern who was her husband at the time tried their best with me. And Aunt Mildred thought that 3-year-olds took naps, so she tried to put me down for a nap which I was extremely - that was definitely not on my agenda. But anyway, that was not the highlight of the visit, the highlight of the visit was going out & playing in a kind of playground grassy area with a hill, & Uncle Dave was playing with some kids his age, he was 8, he was a great big guy, & he was demonstrating how as somebody who was shot, you could roll down the hill dead, and he just did it very elegantly several times, & I watched him & admired him I remember that. And then I went to the swings, & I was pushing a little baby there, a little black baby, and I remember being very aware that I was pushing a black baby and that was a good thing to do. At 3 I already knew about race, my goodness. So I remember quite a bit about that visit, for one afternoon."

By the time of the 1940 US census, the family were living at 55 Commonwealth Avenue in Buffalo. They had been living in Cheektowaga (in the Buffalo area) in 1935. Ruth's father was working as a manager of a retail wallpaper and paint store for Universal Wallpaper & Paint Co. He was on a salary of $3000.

Both of Ruth's parents loved music, and were quite religious. They belonged to University Christian Church (in Englewood Avenue - it no longer exists - denomination Disciples of Christ). Her mother played the piano, and they both sang. Her father had the better singing voice. They used to have musical evenings and invite friends, neighbours and work colleagues around to sing hymns together.

Ruth's mother loved children, and enjoyed setting up things for them to have fun. She would set them up with a cup and a string to send messages or little gifts up and down the laundry chute, and when they had picnics in the back yard she used to lower the food out the window in a picnic basket. She could make little animals and boxes from folding paper.

Ruth recounted a story of her childhood that may have contributed to her interest in conflict resolution: "When I was a little girl - uncle Dave was five years older than me - he was the nearest one in age, and we used to get into a lot of arguments. And [our mom] got tired of settling our arguments. So she invented a very clever thing - she got a ring which she gave to us between us. And this ring was an argument settling ring. And when an argument we were having didn't seem easily resolvable, whoever was wearing the ring it was their turn to win it, and the other one had to give in to them. So at night, we would take off the ring for some reason, and one night I decided to cheat and I claimed that the ring was mine when actually it wasn't, and it ruined the whole solution. And I knew I was not telling the truth, isn't that shocking? I still feel guilty about that many years later, I don't know if I ever confessed it to Mom & Dave, but I spoiled the ring solution. Couldn't even settle arguments with a ring."

She also remembered Dave getting up before her on cold winter mornings to light the stove, so it wasn't as cold when she got up.

Ruth's parents wanted all their children to learn to play an instrument, or at least give it a try. So when she was 8 years old, she started playing the violin & by the time she was 9 she was playing little solos & accompanying her father with obligatos that he would write out by the time she was about 10 - he really liked singing with her playing violin obligatos. He used to like to take her to the Mission with him and have her play her violin there; while her mother's values underlay her deep desire to be a part of transforming the world for the better, the trips to the Mission with her father probably also played a formative part in it, and gave her the opportunity to meet with some of the sorts of people she would later try and help in her adult life.

In 1947, a frozen custard store opened near the family's home, and Ruth enjoyed recounting the story of this for her grandchildren: "Anderson's Frozen Custard - we were there on the opening day. My dad, Grandfather, loved frozen custard, which is kind of like ice cream you know. And Anderson's opened a beautiful frozen custard store right up at our corner, at Kenmore & Englewood. And so Grandfather was there before they even opened, and on their opening day, and he told them they'd see a lot of us and they did, because he used to buy frozen custards for the whole family quite often. Grandfather paid for our first frozen custard there with a dollar bill, which they framed on the wall cause it was their very first sale. And as far as I know they have it to this day, the start of the Anderson Frozen Custard business, which is a huge business these days - I mean not a chain, but a very large & successful enterprise. And a lot of people thought it was funny, because we lived only a block away but we'd drive up there, cause Grandfather didn't like walking much. So we'd drive up and have some nice, unhealthy frozen custard."

Another much-loved feature of Ruth's childhood was the family reunions:

"We had family reunions at a place called Silver Birches, and they were a lot of fun. All the relatives came, and there was a swimming place there, and there was Treasure Rock, because one time one of the cousins lost a quarter, and he was so upset that the uncles would go out with him to the rock, and he ended up finding about 3 dollars and twenty-five cents. And so everybody got onto it and all the cousins would look for treasure at Treasure Rock, but miraculously it was only there when one of the uncles had been there to seed it. But anyway we had a lot of fun at the Reunions, and there was a famous banana split too that didn't have any bananas. Every Sunday night the uncles would take everyone into town, and we would celebrate the end of it with a great big banana split party. But you could order any kind of sundaes you wanted, it didn't have to be banana splits, but most people ordered banana splits, and this local place was completely out of them so one time we were having this and Uncle Dave said "Hey there's no banana in this banana split!" and nobody else had noticed because there was so much else in them. But anyway, we had a kind of storytelling night, and Uncle Floyd had a standard joke that he told every year - he was a very very bright person, but he had one joke. And he would get up there and he would say "There were two fleas. And they said what shall we do tonight? And one of them said Let's go to a movie. And the other one said OK. Shall we walk or shall we hop a dog?" And that was the joke. And he thought it was very funny.

One of the places where we had a reunion had an artificial lake, and I was a very young girl, and I heard my family talking on the way to the reunion about this artificial lake we were going to swim in, and I thought that was rather odd, but I didn't say anything at all I just listened like young children do sometimes, and so I waited until I drank some of the water at the place, and I swam in it, and I finally said to [my mom] "You know, this water tastes and feels just like real water!"

After finishing high school in Buffalo, Ruth went to study violin at the Conservatory in Oberlin College. But after a year, she decided spending all those hours practising every day wasn't how she wanted to use her time; it was a liberal arts college, and all her friends were studying intellectually interesting subjects and talking about them, and she wanted to be part of that too. So she changed course. She was worried that her parents would be very disappointed she was giving up the violin, but her mother was very philosophical about it, telling her it was going to make a lot more difference to Ruth than to them.

While at Oberlin, Ruth was involved in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society's productions, and became interested in Quakerism; during her years at Oberlin, she spent four months in the Philadelphia office of American Friends' Service Committee as part of a year and a half of service work with AFSC.^[1]

After graduating from Oberlin in 1956, Ruth spent the summer in Europe. She hitch-hiked on the continent with a girlfriend, and attended "two work camps in England, where volunteers from many lands spent their vacations in building a road, painting a school, and constructing a village hall".^[1] The village hall was in Hundon, Suffolk, and it was at the Hundon Quaker work camp in July that she met her future husband Ray Morris. It must have been an intense time for many participants, because a number of other future married couples met there for the first time too. The story of the work camp is written up in detail at The History of Hundon Village Hall (on archive.org)

After returning from Europe, Ruth was part of the AFSC Interne-in-Community Service (ICS) project in Oakland, California. Twelve adults and two young children lived in a shared house, cooking and eating together and exploring their overlapping interests which included education, social work, religion, journalism, human relations, youth counselling, sociology, music, international affairs, village development. The group was from a variety of backgrounds and included Mennonites and Brethren.^[2] Some cherished life-long friendships began here for her.

Ruth went on to do a Masters in Sociology at Illinois, graduating in 1958 - her thesis was on the influence of conscientious objectors in the U.S. prison system. Her mother was a pacifist and supporter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Ruth had become interested in Quakerism while at university, and no doubt these will have influenced her choice of topic.

She followed this with a Masters in Social Work at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1959 ("Friendship Patterns in an Institution for Delinquent Girls.") She continued on there to do a PhD in Sociology and Social Work, finishing in 1963 ("A Theory and Comparison of Female and Male Delinquents and Non-Delinquents.")

Ruth & Ray corresponded for some time after the work camp, and eventually decided to meet up again, at another Quaker work camp, this time in Israel. There were quite a few young Palestinian men at the work camp, which was supposed to help build a road to an isolated Palestinian village. One of their families was celebrating a wedding during the camp, and the workcampers were all invited. As there was dancing, the guests were all invited to do a dance from their own countries. Some, including Ruth, were very reluctant, but Ray offered them a Scottish dance, very dignified and (in their view) quite hilarious, but he was never bothered by friendly laughter. The hosts all ate chunks of meat with their fingers, and the workcampers knew the young men well enough by this point to be able to ask them, tactfully, whether this was hygienic. Their answer was very interesting: When you go out for a meal, you eat with someone else's knife and fork. You have no idea where they have been. We know exactly where our fingers have been. The campers were pressed them to eat rather a lot by the Arab family, saying 'my father will be angry' every time they tried to say they'd had enough.

The people managing this camp made everyone work very hard regardless of the hot sun, and Ray & Ruth both got diarrhoea. After the camp they went on a trip through Yugoslavia together.

They were married 23 July 1961 in Ruth's home town of Buffalo, New York, USA, at University Christian Church (her family church) but in a Quaker wedding under the care of the Quaker Meeting there, having agreed to try living in both their countries, starting with England. After a honeymoon where they travelled in the US in a borrowed or rented car, driven by Ruth since Ray hadn't learned to drive yet, they returned to Birmingham to set up house together, at 24 Station Road, Harborne. Ruth must have finished her PhD from here by correspondence over the next two years. They shared the house with an elderly lady - she had the big front room upstairs, with the view of all that was happening in the street, and the bathroom was shared; the rest of the house was Ruth & Ray's. The lady had been the companion of the previous owner of the house, and when the woman died a condition of her will had been that the lady could continue living there as long as she lived.

Unfortunately Ruth and this lady had different ideas of what proper cleanliness was - the way Ray told the story was that one of them thought it was important to bathe daily and to clean the house once a week, the other thought it was important to bathe once a week and clean the house daily. This was a source of some tension, although there was goodwill on both sides, and particularly so when the lady spoke to Ray's mother about it.

They also had some difficulties at the local laundrette, where they used to wash the nappies as well as their clothes - one day the manager approached and asked them not to bring their nappies because one of the customers had complained. They asked why, didn't his machines get them clean, and he said of course, this person just didn't like the idea of using the same machine afterwards. They were supposed to wash the nappies first by hand, then take them to the laundrette! But they found some local organization that would wash anything you could cram into a bag. Since the nappies compressed when wet, a bag and a half of neatly folded nappies returned for each one they sent.

Ray was a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Statistics at Birmingham University from 1960 till 1964. However Ruth didn't feel totally comfortable living in England, so it was time to try living in America for a while to see if that was better. Ray had some work briefly at the University in Boston, and then they went on to Washington where they spent the next four years, and he was Associate Professor of Sociology at the American University there. They had a house in Grosvenor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland with cherry trees in the garden. Although they were starting a family, they both had strong concerns for social justice which took up some of their time and effort. They were pacifists, and at one point took out a bank loan for $1000 (which was a huge sum of money to them at the time) to support their local peace candidate during the Vietnam War.

Just as Ruth wasn't entirely comfortable living in England, Ray didn't feel entirely at home in the United States. Ruth's sister was living in Canada, and suggested they might find it a comfortable compromise. So they moved there in 1968, and Ray took up a post at York University in Toronto, where he taught sociology (and some statistics) for the rest of his career, apart from a one-year sabbatical in Quebec City. He had a lifelong interest in languages, and after years lecturing on the main campus, he switched to Glendon Campus, where he could lecture in French. In Toronto, the family lived for a time in townhouses, then bought 198 Grandravine Drive, where they lived happily for many years, and which was near enough Ray's work that he could cycle there and back rather than drive.

Ruth loved going to performances of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas all her life, as did Ray. She had a thick songbook of their works, which she enjoyed playing on the piano and singing at home - she wasn't as proficient a pianist as her mother, but could accompany herself or others very competently if she'd practised the piece enough. She also loved playing and singing the hymns and religious songs she'd learned from her parents. She liked classical music, and went to orchestral concerts with Ray and the children. She didn't really like jazz, and actively disliked what she called "loud music", which was pop and rock. Ray had one or two records that were jazz, and saved those and his British comedy recordings for playing when she wasn't around - she never really got the English sense of humour - but generally their tastes in music were very compatible.

Ruth had an active career directing social agencies and programmes relating to the criminal justice system, homelessness, conflict resolution, access to banking services for the less privileged in society, community building and drug awareness. She was also a very loving mother, put her career on the back burner to spend time with her children when they were small, and set aside time every evening to read novels aloud to them - Dickens, Scott, and many more. She sometimes volunteered in their elementary school, taking her guitar to play and sing folk songs for them. She also gave university lectures in sociology at times, and enjoyed public speaking on the subjects she was passionate about. In addition to devoting her working life to trying to build a fairer society, she and Ray gave generously to charity all their lives, and she served on Quaker committees, and participated in the Quaker visiting programme at the Don Jail in Toronto.

Meeting prisoners in the Don Jail - an institution for people accused of a crime who hadn't had their trial yet - she was moved by the stories they told, and wanted to try and help, particularly those who seemed likely to present little risk to society if they were let out on bail, but who didn't have the amount of money required as surety, or a friend or relative who could offer it. She discussed it with Ray, and they started bailing out some of these people, using their own money as surety that the person wouldn't run away but would stand trial. Some of these people had nowhere to live on release, and Ruth and Ray welcomed them into their own home. These experiments were not always a complete success - but they were happy that they were doing what they saw as God's work, in the best way they knew or could figure out how to do it. It hurt when things went wrong, but it was worth it to give these people a chance. Ruth had always wanted to have an open home, where people from outside the family felt welcome.

As a result of these personal adventures, Ruth was involved in setting up the Toronto-York Bail Program, of which she was the Director from 1979-1983. It did part of what she had been doing privately - bailing out people who it was reasonable to release on bail and who couldn't afford the bond - on a larger scale and a professional basis. She was also involved in setting up a half-way house called My Brothers' Place, to do the other part of what she had been doing privately and on a smaller scale - giving people who had been in jail a place to go where they would be welcomed and given support.

Ruth wrote a number of books and pamphlets about her experiences and vision for society, many of which are listed in the Wikipedia article. She also wrote a couple of children's books set in the universe of the Wizard of Oz.

Later in her career Ruth spent a number of years working at a community centre in downtown Toronto called St Stephen's House, and later again she worked for Black Creek Focus, a social agency near where she lived. Her experiences of the penal justice system led her to believe that it was not beneficial to society to incarcerate the overwhelming majority of convicted criminals; that if what we want is to get people to stop reoffending rather than to punish them, then prison is often counterproductive because it puts them in a community where criminal behaviour is seen as the norm and where they can learn more ways to commit crimes and try and get away with it, and where they are often not given the help they would need to overcome the personal problems that put them there. She accepted that society needs to lock up a small minority of violent criminals for the protection of other people, but she saw the changes needed to fix the system as so drastic that it was more appropriate to call it prison abolition than prison reform.

Through every heartbreak in the challenges she set herself, Ray was with her, supporting her wholeheartedly.

Ruth did volunteer work for the New Democratic Party in Canada during election campaigns, usually canvassing - knocking on doors and talking with people about the issues.

The wider family as well as the immediate one was very important to Ruth - she took the family to visit her parents in Buffalo every month or two while they were living there, and wrote her parents and Ray's parents regularly, and kept in touch with her brothers and sisters and cousins. After her father's death, when her mother's Alzheimers got too bad for her to stay in her own home any longer, she took her mother to live in Toronto with her. Her mother was very happy about Ruth's efforts to help people, and got on fine with the people on bail who lived there too. The Alzheimer's however was difficult for them both, and her mother used to get very angry and frustrated and confused at times. Eventually she broke her hip, and required a level of care that would have been difficult to provide at home, so she went into a nursing home for the last weeks of her life.

In later life Ray gradually developed COPD which got increasingly severe with time. They both loved spending time with their grandchildren. Ruth developed cancer, but it was operated on and was thought to have been completely removed. However no radiation treatment or chemotherapy was given as a backup.

On retirement, Ruth and Ray decided to move West since dry air was supposed to be good for lung conditions, and there are areas in the rain shadow of the Rockies where the climate is exceptionally dry. They found the house of their dreams in Salmon Arm British Columbia, with idyllic views, and moved there early in 2001. Ruth's cancer had regrown in the same place, and was now inoperable. Radiation therapy knocked it back but was unable to get rid of it. But she insisted on carrying on with their plans to move in spite of her illness, as she wanted to leave Ray in the best possible state she could.

Ruth organized one last family reunion for the extended family that summer in Salmon Arm, to coincide with Ruth and Ray's 40th wedding anniversary.

Ruth was awarded the Order of Canada in the summer of 2001. She was already ill with cancer, so the award was presented to her by the Governor General at a special ceremony in her home, in advance of the main ceremony that year for recipients. She died on September 17th 2001 in her home in Salmon Arm, where she was receiving palliative care from the local health services. She was cremated privately, and there was a funeral at the First United Church in Salmon Arm, where she and Ray had attended since there was no Quaker Meeting locally. There was a memorial service later at Toronto Meeting, where she had been an active member for many years. Ray scattered some of her ashes in the garden in the Meeting House garden in Toronto, and took the rest back to Western Canada to scatter there.

Sources

• Family records; biography on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Morris

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQ1Z-PVH : accessed 11 March 2018), David S Rittenhouse, Tonawanda Town, Erie, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 15-171A, sheet 9A, line 39, family 199, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 2531.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Clipping entitled 'RUTH RITTENHOUSE TO SERVE IN CALIFORNIA' from a church newsletter, image of an original copy in possession of Morris-18630
2. ↑ Untitled report on their year at ICS by participants, image of an original copy in possession of Morris-18630

• https://andersonscustard.com/favorite-local-food/