6 NOVEMBER 1,2007
Smoke Signals
'SDue tsNuglhtt oas to be nirodlepeirodeiniS'
RICKAKD continued
from front page
home in the Tribe's Elder housing
complex. Youngest daughter, Mary
Rickard, takes care of Ruth there
at night.
"She partied with us right up
until she had her stroke," says old
est daughter Laurie Cathcart, who
lives in Portland.
"We always worked, though, by
gum," says Ruth, who gets around
today mostly in a wheelchair. She
walks mainly with a helping hand.
"We never stayed home because we
couldn't go to work."
She was the type, Laurie says,
who would call from work and say,
"Get ready. As soon as I get home,
we're going down to North Fork."
The family lived in Stayton and
Ruth would take all four children
along with Soy, their white Samo
yed, wearing sunglasses, up the
Santiam River to go swimming.
The family included Thelma
Ruth and her four children: Mark
Grosser, from her marriage to her
first husband, Duwayne Grosser,
along with Laurie, Melia and Mary,
children from Ruth's second mar
riage to Gerald Rickard.
"I said I wanted a big family,"
says Ruth, "and boy did I get one
quick."
"When she was married to Du
wayne Grosser," says lifelong friend
and fellow Tribal Elder Joyce Ham,
"they did a lot traveling, boat rac
ing. They went all over in competi
tions. Devil's Lake at the coast."
Grosser, a log trucker, was killed
in a truck accident.
Ruth remarried, and when that
marriage didn't last, she began
working two jobs. As a single moth
er for most of the years when her
children were growing up, she al
most always held two jobs.
"I don't know how she did it,"
Laurie says recently from her home
in Portland. "She tried to keep us in
baby sitters, but we were a rebel-
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Photo by Ron Karten
lious bunch."
"She worked and raised us, and
sent us to Catholic school and went
to school herself and got more
education so she could get a better
job," Mark says.
Today, Mark is a tattoo artist
with MPG tattoo shops in Salem
and Lincoln City.
"She was a good mother," he
adds.
"She raised us to go to Catholic
school," Laurie says. "She tried to
do the right thing, thinking that
a Catholic education was the best
thing for us."
"We'd take family trips when my
two littlest sisters were younger,"
Mark remembers. "She took us
down to the redwoods and Crater
Lake, and that kind of stuff."
"Mom was always getting me into
activities," he says, "since my Dad
died when I was young. She always
had me in the Boy Scouts and we
had plenty of friends around."
"She was a light-hearted person,"
Laurie says. "She never lectured or
told us what to do. She was never
critical."
Leading by example
"By example," is how Laurie
remembers her mother's teaching
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Name: Thelma Ruth Rickard
Age: 77
Born: Grand Ronde, Ore.
Education: Graduated Wil
lamina High School,
business classes.
Family: Marriage to Duwayne
Grosser, son Tribal member
Mark Grosser; marriage to
Gerald Rickard, daughters
Tribal members Laurie Cath
. cart, and Melia and Mary
Rickard; grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
Quote: "I remember
lots of fun."
Photos courtesy of the Ruth Rickard family
Ruth and her first husband, Duwayne Grosser. Duwayne is holding son, Mark.
style. "She taught us to be indepen
dent. And all of us girls are single
like she was!"
"I'd come home and they'd have
dinner ready," Ruth says. "Laurie
mainly. I told them what to do and
they got it done. Even if they got
mad, they got it done. Laurie was
a good sister."
"She told me that I was the oldest
and to be responsible for my sisters,"
Laurie says. "So, I made sure they
cleaned up and, once in awhile, they'd
turn around and beat me up."
"Mom taught me to cook and can,"
Mark says. "Grandmother taught
me to sew, drive and pull weeds. My
mom is the reason why I was direc
tor of maintenance for this place (in
the 1990s). When we were growing
up, I was the man in the house. If
the dryer broke and I was 10 years
old, she'd say, 'Fix it.' Between that
and pretty much growing up in my
grandfather's (Grosser's father)
shop. Also from her, I got myself
motivation."
Ruth remembers: "When they
were little, they had to earn their
own clothes for school and they
had to get a job every summer to
provide money. We made our own
way. And I think that has taught
the kids how to work."
Ruth grew up in a house where
there was plenty not because
they had so much but because ev
erybody worked and they made use
of every scrap.
And Ruth followed the tradition
in her home.
"She canned everything," Mark
says. "She froze fish. I used to fish
constantly. We lived next to a creek
(in Stayton). We'd freeze most, and
mom would can some. She canned
everything from peaches to chicken.
Everything that grows."
"When she moved out," Mark con
tinues, referring to when Ruth moved
to Alaska for almost a decade, "I got
rid of those damn cans and hoped to
never see them anymore."
"Then I had to go out and get
some more," Ruth says, referring to
when she returned from Alaska.
"She was a way old-school In
dian," Mark says. "Nothing got
wasted. Everything got canned."
"There was one time about 30 years
ago," Mark says, "when I was driv
ing truck for Norbest, and I swung
by Mom's house and left two live
turkeys in the yard. It was a fenced
yard and that kept them in, and I had
it planned that I wanted to kill them
when I got home later. I drove back
by later and says to Mom, 'Don't kill
them. I want to do it later.'
"And she says, 'Too late.' "
"I love that story about the tur
keys," says Mark's wife, Patti,
"because it shows she don't waste
nothing."
Laurie says that when Ruth saw
somebody with more Indian blood
than she had, "She'd call them 'a
real Indian.' "
Raised on Grand
Ronde Road
Thelma Ruth Smith grew up down
Grand Ronde Road, a couple of blocks
from the current Tribal campus.
"You could practically hit it with
a rock from here," Mark says during
an interview in the Tribal Gover
nance Building. He came along with
his wife, Patti, and his mother.
She lived on the Smith farm off
the extension of Grand Ronde Road
across from where the grade school
once sat, and down some from the
original Tribal government office.
'That house is still standing," her
sister, Tribal Elder Lillian (Lynn)
Berray, says. Nine years younger
than Ruth, Lynn is retired and living
in Vancouver, Wash., where she also
makes Santas sold by Spirit Moun
tain Casino's gift shops. "And the
woman who lives there says it has
some sort of historic designation."
Her parents, John and deceased
Tribal Elder Celia Smith, were good
farmers, if a little strict, according
to Lynn.
"Maybe it was the times, but our
parents didn't tell us anything," she
says. "The sayings I grew up with
were things like, 'Little pictures
are to be seen and not heard.' And
when we'd go shopping, they'd say,
'Don't touch that,' though later, of
course, you learned that touching
was a way of learning. 'Don't cry,'
they'd say. 'Nobody wants to hear
you whining.' "
Ruth says that while growing
up, the children helped around the
farm although there was quite a
separation between children. Her
brother, Jim, who passed away
two years ago, was nine years older
than she, just as she was nine years
older than Lynn.
But Lynn says that they never re
ally felt like only children because
the family took in cousins and fos
ter children along the way.
"I always helped Dad out in the
barn," says Ruth. "I had summer
chores and winter chores. We had
cats and also work horses. My sis
ter helped in the house. And mom
worked all summer at the cannery
here (in Grand Ronde). My folks
were always working."
"Ruth and I had to hoe the straw
berries before we could go swim
ming," says lifelong friend and
Tribal Elder Diane (Linton) Giffen.
Ruth's father also worked for