I need to share what I know about Ruth Hannah Shaw, MHS Girls Counselor! I met Ruth in 1971 as a shy, fat 8th grader standing the halls of MHS. She called me in one day to design her bulletin board. I covered it with an astrology charts on her wall. She told me I was strange and asked me to visit her home. She lived in a long, single-wide trailer with her father, Dr. John Hannah, the priest at the Episcopal church in East Plantsite. When I visited her she took me to the living room of her trailer which was filled with a full sized, rosewood, Steinway and Sons, Grand piano!! She had been a pianist for the NYC Ballet, had been an accompanist for several popular singers and, for a short time, was a student of Sergei Rachmaninov! She introduced me to the music of Satie, Debussy, Rachmaninov, and Edward MacDowell which she played for me. I learned she had a short marriage to an ntertainment man named Shaw which ended soon after and she went back to grad school and got her MA in counseling from Columbia University. She loved Native American art and covered her arms and her home with turquoise, malachite and silver. She chain smoked Camel unfiltered cigarettes, had a voice like Elaine Stritch and loved the cats she and her father ( a fine violinist in his own right) lived with. She was one of the most important people in my life. I would have never left Morenci and gone on to collage, were it not for her. After I graduated from college we had only sporadic contact and the last I heard, her father had died, she had set herself on fire, falling asleep with a lit cigarette in her mouth and now in a convalescent home in Phoenix. This was about 1990 and I never heard from you again, Ruth. Years later I went on the Internet and learned you had died in 1995. I dont know if I ever told you but, Thank you, Ruth Shaw. So much of who I am today, is because of you!!!!!
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 23:39:50 +0000
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