Ruth Meredith's World as a Teenager

The sweet 93-year-old picture you see shows Ruth Meredith as a girl.  It was taken in the rapidly-growing Austin area on the far west side of Chicago in the summer of 1920.  She was in 7th grade at that point, later to move on to Austin High School.   Ruth started the early diaries that are part of Pieces of a Life when she was in high school.

Ruth, my mother, loved to dance and sing with girlfriends as a teenager.  Some of the scenes in her early diaries are like sketches from  Little Women, with a group of girls laughing, playing games, daydreaming about the future.  It seems so very different from today with television, computers, smart phones sapping our attention.

Ruth loved to make her own clothes.  She was talented in creating something unique out of the pattern, the fabric and the trims. She had an eye for interesting color combinations and often used purple or lilac as either the primary color or the trim. They were her favorites all of her life.

Ruth had dark blonde hair and hazel eyes, which she was told were "cat's eyes."  In a diary, she mentions her height - 5 foot 1 inch - and that she weighed 100 lbs.

Did Ruth make the dress she's wearing?  It's likely. The person who taught her to sew was probably her mother, Lottie.  A lefty, Lottie was born in 1886, a time when her left hand would have been tied behind her to encourage using the right hand.  Most likely due to that, she was awkward in writing and mechanical skills all of her life.  She wrote with her her left hand when she was adult.  Tasks like sewing were difficult for her.

If you'd like to know more about Ruth and Lottie as well as the rest of the cast of characters in Pieces of a Life, go to https://sites.google.com/site/booksbydianepellettiere.

1920 - Ruth Meredith (right) posing with a friend at age 14.