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Ruth Bailey's Page:::

As I've noted before, I grew up with Ruth Bailey from the 4th grade on and, although I sometimes wished that I could be her boyfriend, she seldom seemed to return my interest in her whenever we would talk or I might try to flirt.

I have a few specific memories of Ruth from Meridian High.

Like us Bishop 's, the Bailey's were a big family of 8 kids and Ruth was the oldest of six girls and two boys. I was the oldest of 7. We had six boys and one girl. Her full name was Ruth Marie Bailey and she had the same initials as me, Raymond Max Bishop (RMB). None of this means a thing but I always thought it gave us a lot of com mon experiences even though today I suspect we may be as different as day and night.

I belonged to the 4H club and took several classes like woodworking and electricity, the usual boy stuff. Just for the heck of it, I decided to sign up for the 4H cooking class. Ruth's taking the class at the same time may have something to do with my decision to do a traditionally girl's thing but I don't remember. I probably just wanted to hang out with a bunch of girls instead of a bunch of boys. That's all I remember about that. We just had a cooking class together. Oh, and I made sugar cookies for the final project.

Another thing I remember about Ruth is, on one very cold day, I sat with her on the bus to Meridian and noticed that she was wearing jeans underneath her dress. I asked her, since it was often so cold, why she didn't just wear the jeans and a shirt and forget the dress. She told me that girls didn't wear pants in school. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before then that I'd not seen any girls wearing pants inside the school except in gym class. I must have assumed that girls wore dresses because they wanted to and not because they had to. I wasn't very aware of the concept of sexism at the time but something just didn't seem right about girls not being allowed to wear pants.

Another memory of Ruth had to do with blue jeans as well.  On a summer evening, I think between grades 11 and 12, my friend Mike Kauppi invited Ruth and me over to his parent's house for dinner. We were standing in the kitchen doing dishes or making ice cream or something when she looked down at her legs and said something like "What da ya think?".  I didn't understand what she meant and must have looked puzzled because she then pointed at her waist and said "My pants, what do you think?". Still looking obviously clueless about what she meant, she finally grabbed the waistband at the right hip of her low cut jeans, pulled it down until I could see her panties and said (as if I was deaf), "HIPHUGGERS, do you like my new HIPHUGGERS?". I'm sure I must have finally expressed some appreciation of her fashionable new pants at that point but the event probably sticks in my head mostly because pulling her pants down a little was kind of a sexy thing to do.

Near the end of our senior year, although they had been going together for a while, I was shocked when Ruth told me that she and Tom Boman planned to get married soon after graduation.  On one of the last bus rides home from school, I sat near Ruth and asked her why in the hell she wanted to get married to Tom after such a short time together and so soon after we got out into the "real" world. When she said "Well, I'm not married yet, do you want to make me a better offer?". I don't know if I was able to answer her question because I sure wasn't ready to get married and was dumbfounded that she even asked. I can only assume that she was really just kidding and am glad to know now that Tom and Ruth have been happily married for many years.  

1989 Class of 1964 Reunion Biography:

BAILEY, RUTH

BOMAN, TOM

Major Life Events:

Married August 29, 1964 Two children, Tom and Lisa, Two children married, Grandparents this summer 25th Wedding anniversary, August 1989

Current Activities:

Tom; working at Dow Chemical, Midland County Fair Board, Church offices and responsibilities.

Ruth; working at Chemical Bank, Midland County Fair Board, Church offices and responsibilities.

Hobbies:

Tom; riding his Harley Davidson, and spoiling his new grandson, Jesse.

Ruth; reading, crocheting and crafts.

Future Plans:

Retire in ten years, spend eight months in Florida and the summers in Michigan .

MHS Memories:

The incident concerning Tom and Rich Case and Ronnie Church. Tom got two days off. Ruth called to the office to persuade Tom to sing in a concert during his suspension. Mr. Nichels was gone for the same two days, so Tom went to school anyhow.

Classmates Have contact with:

Dave and Sally Schneider and Tom Shauger.

Spouse:

Met in fourth grade, engaged in our senior year.  Received my diamond in last hour Library/Study Hall

Teachers:

Robert Ward; demanded our best.

Ruth Davids; genuine love for students.

Evelyn Peek; sense of humor.

Travels:

We have always lived in the Midland area. We have traveled to Central America , Panama and throughout the South.

Accomplishments:

We celebrated 25 years of marriage on August 29, 1989. Both of us have worked for the same employer more than 20 years each.