Ruth Weston had an even more pronounced southern accent than Dot did. This was one of the many reasons Dot liked her. Ruth hailed from the delta region of Mississippi, and when they caught the bus together, Ruth would ask for a “transfuh,” and Dot would laugh and laugh. Dot herself had a strong and distinct manner of speech; coming from Virginia’s Southside, Dot said “tomahto” and “auhnt” for “tomato” and “aunt,” and pronounced “mouse” and “house” with a long o, as if they rhymed with “gross,” a remnant of colonial settlement in the region. But Dot still loved the languid way that Ruth said “transfuh,” and she took to repeating it, to Ruth’s mild annoyance, though in general Ruth reacted well to teasing. Dot also liked Ruth Weston because—quiet and reserved though she might be—she was always willing to go along with the escapades Dot suggested, be it letting a strange man deliver a mattress to their home, or traveling all the way to the beach and back during their one day off, after working seven days of eight-hour shifts. You might not be able to tell it from looking at her, but Ruth Weston was game.
Ruth was short and dark-eyed and olive-complected and somewhat round-faced. She had grown up in the crossroads of Bourbon, Mississippi, where she was one of seven children. Boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, the Weston sibling series went. Each girl had an older and a younger brother. Their mother was open about the fact that she didn’t want girls and was trying to have as many boys as possible; the girls in the Weston family were basically just interstitial accidents. “Boys were more important to her than girls,” recalled her youngest daughter, Kitty. “She didn’t say, ‘I didn’t want you.’ But it was there.” Their mother did sometimes allow that, fortunately, the Good Lord had known better than she did.
Bourbon was little more than a postal address, in truth, surrounded by cotton plantations. Ruth’s father served as postmaster and owned a general merchandise store. He also farmed, but not well. The Depression was hard on the Weston family, as it was on most people in Mississippi. The children worked in the store, and if they sold $5 worth of items between opening and closing, that was a big day. In June 1931 their father suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, so the younger Weston children never knew him except as an invalid.
Despite Ruth’s mother’s bias against daughters, education in the Weston family was important, even for the girls. Ruth’s maternal grandparents came from Germany and saw higher education as a way for the family to become assimilated quickly. Ruth’s mother had attended some college, as had her sister—the children’s aunt—who lived with them and ruled the roost. Ruth had an older sister, Louise, and a younger sister, Kitty, and all three Weston girls went to college. They attended Mississippi State College for Women, a public women’s college founded after the Civil War—as the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls—when the South needed educated women to help rebuild the economy. Many female students majored in home economics or “secretarial science,” but the Weston girls majored in math.
Despite her gifts, Ruth had struggled to find a teaching job. That was just before the war, when male teachers enjoyed hiring preference. When she did find one, the conditions were tough and low paying. Ruth’s younger brother, Clyde, drove her in the family car to her first teaching job, about sixty miles from their home, in a place called Pleasant Grove. It lay in the northern part of the state and was the most rural spot he had ever seen—more rural, even, than Bourbon. Ruth boarded with another teacher and taught at a school with no heat, electricity, or running water, making $71 a month. She lasted one year, then found a job in Webb, Mississippi, which was also low paying, if slightly less primitive.
Once the war started, the Weston family’s German roots became problematic. People would ask Ruth’s brothers how their mother felt about the war and whose side she was on. Hearing that “hurt my mother terribly,” Ruth’s sister Kitty later said. Their mother felt proud of her German heritage, but the whole family was staunchly American and intensely patriotic. Ruth’s father flew an American flag every day and instilled his strong sense of civic responsibility in all of his children. People in the area looked up to him as a leader even after he had his stroke. Ruth was close to him; she resembled his mother—her paternal grandmother—and he had been delighted to see the resemblance when she, their fourth child, was born. He adored her, and she him. His stroke had been very hard on Ruth, who shared his patriotism and commitment to public service. For all these reasons, the Arlington Hall job was perfect for her.
In addition to her math acumen, Ruth Weston had a musical streak. She was a talented piano player, and unflappable. Once, during a recital, she was wearing a pink evening gown and a June bug started crawling up her bare back. During a pause in the score, she stopped playing for an instant, reached back, and flicked it away without missing a note. Her little sister Kitty was watching admiringly from the audience and never forgot Ruth’s casual, self-possessed flick.
But what Ruth Weston was most famous for was this: You could tell her anything and she’d keep it to herself. She was the most reserved, most closemouthed person imaginable. Her shyness made teaching hard for her. Ruth had many objections to teaching, chief among them that it paid so badly—she called it a “respectable way of starving to death”—but also because she disliked being the center of attention.