| Honored by: | Bob Blumenschein |
| Brick location: | F:28 map |
Ruth Confare Staka was born 11/3/1903 in Kansas. But somehow in the fall of 1914 she lived in Ames, Iowa, next door to my parents in their new home. I was one year old that October. I’m told she baby-sat me on occasion, and that she taught me to say "uth" even before I learned to say "mommy" or "daddy." What I do remember is that whenever she came home from school, she would tap on our low dining room windows--my call to a game session through window or screen.
Like me, she grew up in the Ames school system. She graduated from ISC in 1925. Before, during, and after her college years she worked in Dean Buchanan’s office in Central Building, where at times I saw her on my busy way to class. It was inevitable, of course, that she would meet, fall in love, and marry one of the many grad students passing through the dean’s office.
Ruth and Robert Straka, a microbiologist, raised their family in California. Ruth still lives in a retirement complex in Davis. How lucky I was to find Ruth again when the lady in the ISU Alum’ office responded to my question about Lucille Goresline by indication Ruth was the source of the Goresline history.
Submitted on 12/28/94