Ruth Campbell
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Ruth Campbell Roland Campbell
Born Dec 3, 1926 Born Feb 2, 1925
Died Dec 9, 2019 Died Mar 27, 2015
Ruth was born in Virginia and was the youngest of four children. Her grandmother Alma, was Cherokee and whose parents survived the 1830's Trail of Tears, of which some Cherokee settled north in the Virginia area while the majority walked west to Oklahoma. Her grandmother Alma, as a teenager in the 1850's, worked on a Virginia farm near her home. When the Virginia farmer's young wife died during her second childbirth, Alma moved into the house to help care for the farmer's two young children. We believe his name was James Phillips. Ultimately, she and James, who was young as well, fell in love, married, and had seven more children together. Nine children total in the household and one of which was Ruth's mother. Ruth never really knew her father, and her mother passed away at an early age. Ruth's grandmother Alma lived up until her late 90's and was the mother-figure Ruth spent the most time with. Ruth remembered as a young girl during the 1930's hearing Alma's stories of what it was like living through the Civil War. She retold how kind the Confederate soldiers typically were to the residents of this southern state as they passed through the area, helping to chop wood and playing with the children. She explained how gruff the Union soldiers tended to be with her white Virginia husband initially, as he met them passing through their farm property before the soldiers met the rest of his combined Cherokee/Caucasian family. Alma's farm was the only one in the area that was not burned by the Union army as part of the campaign late in the war to deny the southern army resources from the land. Alma credited this to her farm having never using slaves and that her young children with the farmer were half-Cherokee, and this, along with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, resonated with the Union commanders and their soldiers. Ruth's older siblings were all brothers who served in WWII. When her mother prematurely left the family, Ruth grew up in several different homes of relatives during the Great Depression. She fondly remembered one of her older brothers regularly carrying "baby Ruth" part-way to school on the mornings when she complained that it was cold outside, or her feet hurt.
Roland or "Rol" as his friends called him was an only child and was born in Toledo, Ohio. Raised during the 1930's Great Depression, his family felt the full brunt of those hard times. Graduating from high school early in WWII, Roland was able to start college at Texas A&M University. He soon felt the call of duty, dropped out of school, and along with several friends, enlisted in the US Army in June of 1943. Roland landed in northern France Oct 2, 1944, approximately 4 months after the D-Day invasion. He spent the next seven months in an almost constant battle as a 19-year-old enlisted infantryman as the US and Allied forces pushed eastward during the winter through France, the Battle of the Bulge and into Germany. He was awarded two Bronze Stars for valor in combat and numerous other awards. After returning home in late 1945, Roland finished his schooling at Ohio State. First, as an engineer and after finishing law school, Roland became a patent attorney specializing in international patent law. Rol authored numerous articles about the patent law business and, besides becoming the chief patent counsel at Ball Aerospace, late in his career taught International Patent Law at Denver University Law School. Rol remained active as a legal volunteer for many years after retiring. As a father, Rol loved to play chess, vacation road trips, and take his boys fishing. He remained active in his children's lives and visited them around the country regularly, up until he passed away in his sleep at 90 years old with his oldest son Bruce by his side.
Ruth met her future husband, Roland Campbell, after WWII in Columbus, Ohio. She was working and raising her two-year old daughter, named Laucretia, by herself and Roland was fresh back from serving as an infantryman in Europe and now working full-time and attending Ohio State University as an engineering student and later also obtaining a law degree. They fell in love, married, and had three boys together; Bruce, Brian, and David. After several career moves around the country, the family settled in Boulder, Colorado, in 1960, where Roland spent his remaining corporate career as the chief patent counsel for Ball Aerospace Corporation. Ruth was many things in her life. A hands-on and supportive mother, human rights activist, award-winning artist, accomplished businesswoman, expert jeweler, and prolific volunteer. In the early 1960s, Ruth was a part of the grassroots collective of women, who founded what came to be the national rape-crisis hotline. She took on this work as a personal crusade, working tirelessly for more awareness and broader social change. She held seminars and talks all around the Boulder-Denver area with college students, police departments, and volunteer groups teaching and raising awareness of this seldom reported problem in those days and providing the resources, education, and helping the victims through their trauma. Always hands-on and action-orientated, Ruth single-handedly ran a battered woman's shelter out of her own home for years before shelters like this became widely available. Later in her 70's and 80's, Ruth also volunteered as a driver for Meals-on-Wheels for those seniors that were unable to get out of their homes on their own and had no family nearby to help them. Ruth was a real-life force of nature and a ferocious defender of equal rights, particularly women and children's rights, and remained active in these causes her entire life. Ruth and Rol's legacy of military duty, volunteerism, and public service is reflected in two of their sons having spent much of their lives in local volunteerism, the military, law enforcement, and one as a long-time local elected official and mayor. Their family is now in their fourth generation of military service in the US Army. Ruth used to credit her early awareness and motivation to get involved helping people to her own Cherokee grandmother, Alma, who shared her life stories and challenges of raising a mixed-race family in the south during and after the American Civil War.
After the death of her husband Roland at 90 years old and the premature deaths of two of her sons, Ruth moved to Palos Verdes, California, in 2017 to be near her remaining son Brian and his two teenage children. Her oldest son Bruce died in a traffic accident, and the youngest son David passed away after a long illness. In California, Ruth was able to settle back in her new senior living home and enjoy the great southern California weather and regular visits from her family. She passed away in her sleep at 93, not long after enjoying her last Thanksgiving dinner with her two local grandchildren. Always able to make deep connections with those around her, and caring deeply for the workers that took care of her in her assisted living home, her son reported that many of her personal caregivers at Belmont Senior Living in Palos Verdes took it very hard when she passed away.
Ruth is buried at Green Mountain Cemetery in Boulder at the base of Green Mountain and nearby many of the hiking trails she and her family walked on over the many years the Campbell family resided in Boulder. Her husband Roland is buried with her as well as are her two sons, Bruce and David, who predeceased her. She preferred a quiet burial without any formal memorial or service. Ruth lived a very full and rewarding life and left the people who were fortunate to have known her with profound and heartfelt memories. The local deer hop the fence at the Green Mountain cemetery in the evening and enjoy the flowers, especially roses, that are commonly found on the graves of loved ones. Ruth, for many years at her home in Boulder, loved feeding the local deer and foxes that used to come visit in her back yard. We placed roses on her grave when we left her the afternoon of her burial in the hopes that the local deer would hop the fence that evening and visit her final resting place. It would make Ruth happy.
Ruth is survived by her middle son Brian and his two teenage boys in California, an older daughter Laucretia from a very early relationship prior to meeting Roland, eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and one great, great-grandchild.
Her son Brian read a favorite poem that Ruth requested be read at the time of her burial in Boulder. It was December 30th under a cool and crisp blue afternoon Colorado sky.
It was written by Mary Elizabeth Frye in 1932 for a friend whose mother had just died:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.