MEEKER | Ruby Hart moved to Meeker in 1931 with her parents Lute and Ella Armstrong. Ruby’s husband Freeman Hart died in 1967.
Ruby has “always been a cook.” She cooked at Pioneers Medical Center, Meeker Middle School, where the school district administration building is now, and Barone Middle School.
Ruby had five children: daughter Jewell Thayn of Green River, Wyo.; daughter Esther Vanderpool of Meeker; son Clinton Proctor, deceased; son Carl Lee Proctor, deceased; and son Kenneth Proctor of Deadwood, S.D.
Ruby has not done much traveling. She did go to Wisconsin twice in two years, “Once for Pat Bouchard’s wedding and then the following year, Pat’s wife sent me a plane ticket to come for Pat’s birthday.” Pat was like a son to Ruby. She met Pat when she needed help with yard work. Pat was a butcher at Watt’s and came over after work at the grocery store to help Ruby.
Ruby is doing “exceptionally well” for 93, except that her eyesight is “practically gone.” Ruby lives in the “little log house” that her husband built. The butterflies decorating her place “were a gift from Jewell’s daughters.”
Ruby likes that Meeker has “been a nice, quiet, little town.”