As much as I enjoyed the writing of “Finding Baby Ruth,” I also took pleasure in doing the historical research. More than a few of the 15 years it took me to finish the book were spent on research. Perhaps because I’m a journalist by trade, I wanted the book to be as true to the actual events as possible. You’ll find 38 pages of historical notes at the back of my book that testify to that intention. The photo at right shows Baby Ruth shortly after adoption.
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Here are a few true stories about “Finding Baby Ruth” that didn’t make the final cut.
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The book was set in Garden City, Kansas, the same town featured in Truman Capote’s book, “In Cold Blood.” Capote wrote about the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in their home just outside of town. My biological grandmother (Jules in the book) died six years before the crime, but her siblings might have been among the crowd who watched in silence as law enforcement officials escorted the two murder suspects up the steps of the county courthouse, as featured in the movie, “In Cold Blood.” The Clutters and the law enforcement officer who tracked down their killers are buried in the same cemetery as Jules.
Jules was undoubtedly ostracized and ashamed of having an out-of-wedlock child. Her difficulties may have been made worse by the concurrent birth of another baby in the family. About a week after Jules’s delivery, an announcement appeared in a local newspaper that her brother and his wife had a newborn daughter. Here’s a photo of my biological grandmother’s family taken about the time my story begins. My grandmother is in the back row on the right.
My adoptive grandmother, Ruth, was most likely also ashamed. She and her husband were married for seven years without having children. Big families were a way of life in those days, especially among farmers. Ruth was one of seven children. Her sister, who lived nearby, had 10 children. Here’s an early photo of Ruth (back row at left) and her very-Swedish family. Both of her parents immigrated from Sweden.
My biological grandfather (Jiggs in the book) also hailed from a large family —10 boys and one lonely girl. One brother was electrocuted at the age of 27 in an oil rig accident that occurred in 1926 near Garden City. Jiggs was also working at the scene and lost a thumb in the accident. According to his niece, Jiggs — who never married —had a “roving eye” for women. He was “good looking, had a hooked nose, drank a lot, but was a really nice guy. He had a sense of humor and all the nieces and nephews loved him,” she said.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with a niece of Jules who remembered the day her aunt had an out-of-wedlock baby. The niece would have turned 13 a few days before the birth. “It was all hush, hush back in those days,” she told me. “I always wondered who you were and where you were, and so forth.” She was 87 when I interviewed her, and she died the next year.
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Trinkle was the real name of the mayor who asked the town’s citizens to all pitch in to build the swimming pool.
Tin Tin, the dog who loves Jules, was based on my dachshund-cocker spaniel, Willie. Here’s a photo of Willie/Tin Tin.