Ruby Louise Fritz

Ruby Force Fritz, a wonderful mom, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister-in-law, wife, teacher, friend, and South Haven resident for more than 70 years, died Friday, December 21, 2007. She was 99.

Ruby was a member of what Tom Brokaw has called “the greatest generation,” and demonstrated the care and courage of her era, time after time.

Born April 19, 1908, she grew up with her parents Walter and Elsie Burt and brothers Jack, Elsen, and Bill on a farm near Martin, Michigan. She recalled those times frequently. “Since I was the oldest, I had to drive the horses when haying time came around,” she would say.

“It was also my job to wash the oil and smoke stains off the globes of our kerosene lamps.”

And she remembered the threshing bees when the women prepared huge meals for the threshing crews, her dad sawing ice blocks in winter, the family making ice cream every Sunday night, and washing her hair in the soft rain water collected in the cistern.

The rigors of farm life prepared her well. At Martin High School, she was the valedictorian of her class in 1925, and the captain of the girl’s basketball team. Ruby rode the inter-urban railroad to Kalamazoo to take courses at Western Michigan University (then Western Normal), where she received a two-year teaching certificate in 1927.

She took a teaching job in Saugatuck, where she met Ed Force. They were married in 1929—secretly in Indiana, since women teachers couldn’t be married, and her wages were supporting Ed’s studies in pharmacy school.

In 1935--at the height of the Depression—she and Ed responded to an advertisement in the Grand Rapids newspaper announcing an opening at the MacDonald Drug Store in South Haven. They moved here that same year, and in 1939 bought the store in partnership with Bob Alm.

Over the years, in addition to starting a family, Ruby was active in many local organizations, including the Scott Club, where she often led play-reading groups. She was a pre-Title 19 “jock” of sorts. A fine golfer, she was the first woman president of the South Haven Golf Club in the 1950s. In her late 80s, while playing what was her last round at South Haven, she parred number 5. She also bowled, on the MacDonald’s women’s team, wearing a Borden’s Ice Cream shirt with Elsie the Cow on the back. Her average was about 145. She kept the scorebook for the American Legion baseball team when her sons played in the summer.

In 1959, she returned to education, teaching seventh-grade mathematics part time at the old Central School. Perhaps driven by her own success as a student (she once convinced her principal to let her organize a third year Latin class because she liked the subject so well), she went back to Western Michigan University, and completed her four-year degree in 1965 at the age of 57. She thought it was neat to receive her diploma “in a funny hat, in the middle of the football field.”

She continued to teach math at South Haven, and hundreds of former students still remember her for the games she created to make math fun.

Following Ed’s death and her retirement from teaching, she married Clarence “Binsky” Fritz, and they spent many happy years between South Haven and their home in Florida.

She was an excellent cook, and kept things simple in true rural American style. Her pie crusts and shortcakes were memorable, her beef stroganoff a classic. She liked food, too, never turning down a shrimp cocktail or her other favorites: olive burgers, and buttered toast in warm milk--a dish from the farm that she savored until just days before her passing.

Ruby is survived by sons and daughters-in-law, Jim and Boo Force (Wausau, WI) and John and Nancy Force (Crystal Falls, MI). Three grand-daughters and their husbands, Jennifer Force and Eric Harvey (Minneapolis), Molly and Charlie Buhler (Racine, WI) , and Kabby and Evan Jones (St. Paul). Five great-grandchildren, William and Isabelle Buhler, Ryan and James Harvey, and Greer Jones. And a sister-in-law, Dorothy Burt (Kalamazoo).

For their care during Ruby’s last years, the family thanks the staff at River Ridge and South Haven Area Hospice, and to the many care givers who stopped in regularly to see her, help her with lunch, or bring her a donut.

A memorial service will be held at River Ridge, 706 Kentucky Ave., South Haven, at 10 a.m. on Saturday, January 12, with Pastor Duane Jones officiating. A reception will be held just prior to the service beginning at 9:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in Ruby’s name to the Gifts from the Heart Fund at South Haven Area Senior Services, 220 Broadway, South Haven, MI, 49090, or South Haven Area Hospice, 5055 Blue Star Highway, South Haven, MI 49090. Kindly share your thoughts and memories on the family’s online guest book at www.FilbrandtFFH.com.

The family is being helped by the Filbrandt Family Funeral Home of South Haven 637-0333.