Ruth Smith Maise
Ruth was born on a farm near Willacoochee in Atkinson County in rural South Georgia, the youngest of eight children (six girls, two boys) of sharecroppers Myrtie (Heron) Smith and Charles Dalton Smith II. She grew up on the farm picking peanuts and cotton, and attended the local country schools. She was always interested in books and reading; one of her older sisters often brought books home from the school library for her to read.
During the war, after the young men in the family had been drafted, the remaining family members moved to Brunswick, Georgia. She attended the local Perry Business School and then got a job as a clerk-typist at Brunswick Marine, which was building Liberty Ships at the time.
After the war, she worked as a youth counselor in the Methodist church in Athens, Alabama. It was here, one summer's day, that she met an itinerant young preacher from New Jersey who was going from place to place along the Southern "Sawdust Trail" preaching in tent shows. This encounter proved prophetic in later years when the preacher, coincidently, married the sister of Ruth's future husband.
Also, sometime that summer she applied to college at Birmingham Southern and was accepted, and got a working scholarship as assistant to the dean of women, and as a dorm house mother.
After graduating Cum Laude, she returned to Brunswick and went to work for the Methodist church again as a youth counselor.
Soon afterward, she migrated to Hunstville, Alabama, and a job at Redstone Arsenal, home of the U.S. Rocket program. It was here she met another Yankee from New Jersey, again at the local Methodist church. She kept this one, married him, and went with him to Saudi Arabia in the days when hardly anyone outside the oil industry knew where it was.
Twenty-five years - two kids - and a self-published book about Saudi Arabia-later, Ruth and her family left Arabia, settled in Decatur, Georgia, and joined the Oak Grove Methodist Church and the Seekers Sunday School Class. Her main project and pride and joy for the church has been the library.
Ruth passed away quietly as a result of Alzheimer's disease on July 29, 2017, leaving behind a husband, Dick, a daughter, Charlene, a son, Eddie, two grandchildren, numerous nieces and nephews, and friends.
Services will be held on Friday, August 4, 2017, at 10:30 AM at Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Decatur, Georgia.