Click Here to Download a Booklet with Ruby’s Story with Photos
As a child, I would sit and my mother’s feet in the early morning to hear her family stories while my siblings still slept. In a family of five children, it’s the only time I had alone with her. She told the story that my grandmother Ruby ran off with another man when my mother was an infant. Because she was still nursing, her father allowed Ruby to take my mother with her. Mom’s story peaked when she told of Ruby and her boyfriend “robbing trains” over two years. When the authorities arrested my grandmother, they placed my mother in an orphanage. My grandfather found out about his ex-wife from a relative who handed him the newspaper article. He traveled to Knoxville to spring my mother from the orphanage (called a Home for Friendless Children, no less), took her home, and raised her. From my mother’s stories, my grandfather was a kind-hearted man with integrity.
About eight years ago, I found my grandmother’s conviction papers—after a twenty-year search. The court convicted her of Larceny and Possession of interstate Freight with a young man she knew from her hometown—a crime made a felony only a few years before because of a notorious train robbery in Rondout, Illinois. The new Bureau of Investigation watched her nationwide operation involving two years of illegal activity.
The court likely granted two years’ probation because she was pregnant by her train-robbing boyfriend. They had nowhere to incarcerate her—the only women’s federal prison had been closed for a few months before her conviction, and the new one not yet open. The court ordered her to stay away from the prison where her boyfriend served time. Her probation letters indicate that she ignored the judge’s orders and moved closer to the prison in Georgia around the time they would release her boyfriend. Later, her probation officer reported to the court that she had “given up” her newborn boy. I found in census records that her son went to live with her train-robbing boyfriend’s parents. They had a son only four years older than her boy. My mother never knew she had a half-brother.
My half-uncle became a war hero. When he was sixteen, he enlisted in the Army, traveling two states to lie about his age. He worked with planes and made flying missions. Early in WWII, the Germans shot down over Italy after a bombing raid to destroy oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania. One of the survivors, Staff Sergeant William Fay, kept a diary. His story is portrayed in Maternity Ward by Marguerite Aronowitz—William Fay’s cousin. The oldest person on the plane was eighteen years old. My half-uncle remains entombed in the Maternity Ward in the Mediterranean Sea. He received the Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross due to his bravery. You can read more at https://etvma.org/veterans/leon-d-pemberton-10167/.
My grandmother left at least five children and possibly more. I wrote this book to understand what factors could lead her to make the choices she did. Because of my mother’s childhood experience, she chose to be a “she-bear” for her children. She became a protective mother even when—or maybe because—she didn’t have one. I come from a long line of wild women. My mother lived her life with the most determination of them all. I am grateful for the cherished stories she told and her intentional grit not to repeat the stories of her past.
