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2018 SUMTER SENIOR LIVING
SUMTER Senior Living 2018 |
SUNDAY, JULY 15, 2018
THE SUMTER ITEM
BY KAYLA ROBINS • KAYLA@THEITEM.COM
Being a teacher with summers off, she has traveled to 48 countries, all over Europe, several in South and Central America, to Morocco. China and Russia were the most interesting because of the “beautiful things and the vivid history.” The most beautiful and quiet place was Bermuda. She loved being set up with host families for dinners because she learned about the real sense of their culture and the actual people who lived in each place.
because she finally was able to get some sweet tea.
In 1983, she traveled to Europe to get a first-hand experience of the subject matter she was teaching to students. Other than spending two nights each in Rome, Paris and London, she traveled to a different country every night for two weeks. She liked going to London last
Her favorite trip, though, was a visit to Miami with her husband, George, and three couples for a USC football game in the Orange Bowl. George loved USC. He lettered in baseball there. They went even though she was eight months pregnant and joked that one of the women they went with was a nurse, so if she went into labor in the stadium she would be in good hands. “We had the most wonderful time.”
She moved to Covenant Place with her husband about three months ago. They’re both in their late 80s. “It’s a blessing to have someone for so long.”
George lived at Covenant Place from its opening in 1994 until his passing in 2001. Ruth moved there in 2011, and people asked if she was making a mistake. But she had already known the place from when her husband was there. “I just feel like I’m back home.”
Born in Brazil in 1936 to a Brazilian-German mother and German father, her family moved back to Germany in 1939. The youngest of “a lot of kids,” she remembers her childhood being full of “bombs falling, being scared, hungry.” She went back to Brazil in 1948 and moved to the United States with three children under the age of 5 in 1965. Her husband had already moved. After having to begin earning a living at age 13, move to a new country without knowing the language and being separated from family throughout her childhood, she said “my dream was fulfilled. My kids grew up in one place, went to school together.”
PHOTOS BY MICAH GREEN /THE SUMTER ITEM
Living at it’s best!
because “we were just so crazy about each other.” Being at Trinity Methodist Church in Sumter was one of their favorite churches. After 40 years of marriage, her husband died at age 61. She is now 104. She has lived at Covenant Place since it opened in 1994. She doesn’t take prescriptions. She just “goes to bed and eat what I want to.”
She has lived all over the state because her husband was with the Methodist Church. They met in high school and married three years later
She said she has had a lot of loneliness all these years without her husband, but she has had a good life, too. She traveled to 23 countries after her husband passed. “I’ve found people are good basically wherever I’ve been.” She still listens to Trinity’s Sunday service over the radio. She helped plant all the flowers and bushes and trees at Covenant Place and loves gardening. “I’ve had a lot of different experiences here, and they’ve all been good.”
She did not leave Louisiana until she got married. Her husband graduated from West Point and the Air Force Academy, and after that they lived in 11 states and Germany. He went overseas four times and flew all the planes the Air Force had. His last assignment was stationed at Shaw Air Force Base. “The people of Sumter have always been so good to the military.”
Sumter’s Only Continuing Care Retirement Community 2825 Carter Road • Sumter, SC 29150
Call today to find out about our summer move in specials
803-469-7007 | www.covenantplace.org
Covenant Place is a locally owned, not-for-profit, continuing care retirement community. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.