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This history is in her own words:
“When I was about a year old, my mother became very ill and she sent me to my grandparents in Heber City, Utah. They were Adophus and Mary Janette Sessions. I feel very blessed to have been raised by my Grandmother Sessions. She was a wonderful woman, very strong, patient, charitable, and kind to everyone she knew.
Dale, my brother, was also raised by her. My Grandmother had few material things in her life, but she had a strong testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. When she received her welfare check we would go to pay her tithing to Bishop Fred Carlile. I remember wading in snow up to my waist to pay it sometimes during the winter.
We lived close to the railroad tracks and in the summer my Grandmother would set out a bottle of peaches and pears and a quilt for the hobos. In the morning the bottles would be empty and the quilt would be folded up and left in the rocking chair on the porch.
When I was growing up we had a primary or Sunday school party. They always wanted me to bring a bottle of my Grandmother’s dill pickles. She always put up a lot of jam and jelly and fruit. She loved currant jelly. She was a great cook. No one made rice pudding like her and her vegetable and barley soup and her sage and rabbit pie.
She made her own soap for many years. Dale and I use to stack it in the shed to dry.
Many times while I was growing up, there was a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Someone needed her. They had been in an accident or was sick or having a baby. She always went. She never complained. She was called an angel of mercy by many people in our town. She delivered many babies in Heber City.
She planted a vegetable garden every year. She would worry if the rows weren’t straight, but the vegetables were always plentiful. She loved flowers and had many beautiful ones in her yard. Columbine was one of her favorites. She also loved yellow roses.
She made many beautiful quilts. She knitted and crocheted many beautiful bed spreads, tablecloths, davenport and chair sets and many baby bed spreads for all of her children and later her grandchildren.
Granddad died when I was 12 years old. He had been sick for a long time. He lay in a coma. You would go into his bedroom and you would wet his lips for him. He never had a gray hair in his coal black hair. I remember going to Charleston with him in a sleigh to feed the cattle. I also remember the big pumpkin he grew before Deer Creek Dam was put in and the farmland was covered with water.
I was very small for my age. On my first day of school Aunt Lizzie, who was still living at home with us, made me a gold satin blouse with long sleeves and a black satin skirt. I looked so cute in it. My cousin, Eva, took me to school. She was very proud of me and I felt so good. I was the smallest one in my class for many years.
Eva and I both wanted sleighs for Christmas one year. I got mine and hurried up to see if Santa brought her one, which he did. We both had a lot of fun sleigh riding for several years.
I went to Wasatch High School in Heber City. The love bug bit me hard and I married just before I turned 17, but I never regretted it. I got the best. I married Robert E. Richardson March 1, 1945 in Heber City, Utah. We made our home in Park City, Utah.
We had four boys:
Robert C. Richardson. He has his own video company now.
Brent E. He is a boilermaker.
Michael D. He is a planner for the State Welfare Department
Scott D. He is a ski patrolman E.M.T. at the Sports Park in the summer in Park City.
They are all good boys and I am very proud of them. I have 2 daughter-in-laws. Dee Dee is a manager for US West. Dotty works for Family Services. I have four grand children. Kresta and Tyler are in real estate. William and Sarah are in Wasatch Junior High and Wasatch High School. Our oldest grand daughter has been a world champion show horse rider twice, in 1997 and 1998. She competed in Fort Worth, Texas at the American Paint Horse Show. She has been showing horses since she was very small. She has a daughter, Hailey, our first great grand child.
Bob, my husband, is very ambitious. He is always working. People call and ask if he can do this or that and he always can. He has made our home we live in now and it is very nice. He does everything and it is always excellent workmanship. He is so good-natured and so kind. He has been an absolutely wonderful husband. He loves sports. We have a camper and go fishing at Strawberry Lake and others as well. Other family members usually go with us so we have a good time. Now that we are older, we try to go to Nevada or Arizona in the winter for a month or so to keep out of the cold and snow. We really enjoy this. We always spend some time with Dale who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I taught primary in our church for 25 years. I loved working with the children. I was also a counselor in the primary. Have been cooking leader in Relief Society for a couple of years. Have cooked in a few cafes around Park City. I have always loved to cook and try out new dishes. I love to make bread and pies.
I like to crochet and make many afghans and have made two bedspreads. I like to work in my big yard. I love flowers and do I love my grandchildren! I enjoy them very much and now I have a great granddaughter, Hailey, which Bob and I enjoy having her at our home when we have the opportunity to take care of her. We can hardly wait when she does come. What a joy it is to be a great grandma.
I enjoy our yearly family reunions. Always cook the turkey and other things to help the person in charge. I store the leftovers in the basement and see that there are presents for the children. Mama (my grand mother) always wanted the family to stay together and I do what I can so that it will. I like to play horseshoe against my feminine cousins and Eva and I are the game ones running races etc., but when I fell down in the gunny sack race, I took a look at myself and wondered what a 60 some year old is doing. Still it is fun and I enjoy being young again.
I always wondered if I really had a father. I had never heard the name of Gettle and wondered if it existed. I wondered who I really was. My cousin in California, Eva, wanted me to come and see if we could find something. I did have the grave location of my sister who was buried in Colma near San Francisco. It wasn’t until Rita’s sister searched my genealogy that I got excited as she found he was born in Chico, California. Eva encouraged me to go visit her and promised to help me search for him. I took courage and flew down to Oakland, California in April 1998. She and her husband, Mike, kept her promise. I never knew my father’s people. We went to Chico and visited the cemetery there. A man in the office spent about two hours with us and was as excited as we were as we discovered five generations of my father’s family. My father was buried there. He had died in 1993. His father, grand father and great grand father and their wives are all buried there. The man in the office took us to see their graves. He had folders on each one with information on them, sort of a history as well as the notices that were put in the paper. My Great grand mother was a Black Foot Indian. Her husband was William Thompson, who went with the Donner Party until they split to go a shorter way. He went the long way, but heard along the way of the Donner Party in distress. As his good friends, the Reeds, were on it he hurried back with the 3rd rescue team to help rescue them. When he got there they had all been rescued, but he found a three-year old girl with no shoes on her feet. He took his gloves and made moccasins for her, covered her up and took her to safety. (This article was in the files at the cemetery.)
He and his wife had to live outside the town of Chico because she was Indian. They lived in a cave. In the history of her father, Ruth found that her stepmother still lives and that she has two half brothers and a half sister. The man in the office turned his head so we could write down the address. I bought flowers for my father’s grave, we drove to the house he lived in and discovered it was rented and the renter gave us the insurance man’s phone number where she paid the rent. We called but just got an answering machine. Eva left a message for him to call Oakland and said it was very important. When we returned home, he called and gave us the phone number of my step brother’s business.
I was afraid to call, wondering how he would accept me, so Eva called the next morning. She asked him if he knew he had an older sister. He asked her if she knew Ruthie, as he had heard about her all of his life and his father had a large picture of her in the house, wherever they lived. He was so excited, he couldn’t wait to talk to me and to see me. I was filled with joy when I talked to him. His name is Jay Gettle. We went over the next day and the first thing he said was ‘I was afraid you weren’t coming’. He put his arms around me and tears ran down his face. I met my step sister, Kay Gettle Rogers, who took off work a half a day and we drove to Calistoga to visit my step mom in a rest home. She had called my step brother’s business and asked to talk to me and said, ‘Ruthie, I just want you to know I love you.’ What a reception! I had a younger step brother named Paul, who was very ill, that I did not get to meet. He passed away around Thanksgiving this year, 1998.
I will always be grateful to Eva and Mike and to God for this privilege of meeting the other side of my family and knowing that my father loved me all his life and his family loved me even before they knew me. My longing has ended and my questions answered. There is much more joy in my life today. I have everything, a wonderful husband, a great family, wonderful daughters-in-laws, great brothers and sisters, grand and great grand children, a nice home, and everything I need, except a few problems in my health, especially my eyes. I guess I can expect that now that I turned 70 this year.”