A former lawyer reflects on family history, writing a book, and regrets

Interviewer 1: You mentioned writing a book. When does this fall into your life? At what point did you start writing after you retired? 

Ruth: When you retire, the first thing people say is, “What are you going to do?” And a good friend of mine said, “Well, you should have something. You don't want to sound too dumb and say that you don’t really know.” 

When my parents died, we brought back boxes and boxes of stuff from Denver to Lexington. I had no idea what they were. I put them in my attic and they stayed there for 30 years. 

Around 2000 when I was retiring, we redid our attic, and all these boxes appeared; all the stuff about getting out of Germany. I also had my first grandchild, and I thought, I need to do something with this stuff for my grandchild. 

My daughter was living in California at the time, a world away from my family history. So that's when I started pulling out the stuff and writing this book. I had a lot of stuff translated because I can speak German pretty well, but I don't read it. 

It took me about 10 years to do it.

 I didn't work on it every day or anything. I just kind of took my time and had to get a lot of stuff translated.

Interviewer 1: What's your relationship with your German culture or heritage? Is that something that you've been very involved in?

Ruth: Every couple of weeks, there is a German table here for dinner. You can go and talk with other people who want to speak German. There’s also a French table. Well, my French is actually better than my German, so I go to that too, but I don't like to go too often, because then my husband has to eat alone. 

But no, I'm not related to that culture. When my parents got here, it was so horrible. The book was closed.

Interviewer 2: Do you have any regrets in life? Anything you wish you did differently?

Ruth: I was lucky. When I transferred up from Emory to law school, I went to Boston College. The dean was very keen on getting women. So, sometimes you're just lucky. I don't know. I think at the time, I often wondered whether going through law school with my first and second daughter was insane. But the kids told me that I was okay. I was a good mother. And you know what? It was just a little crazy at the time, but they said “don't worry.”

I think that issue has not gone away for women: having a career and raising kids. It is still a struggle to find a balance.