Class Notes

Ruth DeMiller Hill became a great-grandmother with the birth of Lilli, who lives in Wyoming with her parents. After 12 years, Ruth recently returned to her hometown of Mobile, Ala., 900 miles south of where she now lives in Angola, Ind. Her daughter, Ruth Alice Smith, drove her, and they visited relatives and friends, one of whom was Catherine Burns Foster, who attended Mary Washington in 1948-49. Catherine has seven children and 14 grandchildren, and her youngest daughter was expecting again. Catherine lived on the third floor of Willard Hall.

Ruth made the trip to gather genealogical information and to see about arranging her funeral and selling cemetery lots. “Anyone want to be buried in the sunny South?” Ruth asked. Funeral costs made her decide to die a Yankee, having been one for 54 years. At least the genealogy search was successful. They located the graves of Ruth’s great-great-grandmother and great-half-uncle. Ruth had searched for more than 30 years for information about the death of her great-grandfather, Alf DeMiller, who was killed in 1862 at the Battle of Corinth in Mississippi. In a Mobile museum, the two Ruths located a diary written on the battlefield by the great-half-uncle that stated that Alf had been killed.

In October, Ruth talked to Betsy Fletcher Adams, who was getting ready to leave for Rome with her daughter. Husband Bill continues to recover from injuries suffered in a spring auto accident.