84. My mother Ruth Allen Miles, opera singer, teacher, wonderful mother!

I have written about my mother, Ruth, in blogs: # 80, # 73 (mostly pictures) # 33, # 30, about when she was on the very first extraction mission, # 24, of a Christmas she had as a child, # 16, what I learned from her about controlling anger, # 7, telling of "The Suet Pudding Story", including my dad and Grandma Allen, and # 6, the story about "Closing my book", which was when she was taking care of a dear friend as she was passing from this life.

All these stories are great, but I want to give a synoposis of the early part of her life today. Today I've  just been to the funeral of a lady who lived to be 95, and the viewing of a man who was Wayne's first principal here in St. George, when we moved down here in 1981.  It makes you think about your own family who are gone, and also wonder what people may say about you in your own funeral!   I will tell more of her parents and grandparents later.

My mother was born Ruth Allen, the 8th child of John Butler Allen and Levinah Emeline Wilson Allen, on May 10, 1908, in Panguitch, Utah, near Bryce Canyon.  They had a farm 5 miles outside of town on which they lived each summer.  Her sisters, LaVern just older, and Adelia, 5 years younger were always very close.  The next part is from her life story, in our book:

The paragraph above was taken from her life story, page 221, in the book about Pal's ancestors.  I will include some quotes from her own life story. 

Some of her first recollections were when her own father died, when she was just 6 years old.  Apparently she didn't go to school before her father died on October 26, 1914.  She remembered that her first grade teacher,Miss Excell, was so kind to her when she came to school for the first time after he died.  Miss Excell was having each child read a certain part in a book.  She had Ruth read last, (which gave her time to memorise what each child had said before) and she then really praised Ruth, and said "Ruth has learned to read in just one day!"  Perhaps that is why she became such a well-loved teacher herself.

Then, when she was 10 years old, the big flu "pandemic" of 1918, happened, and school was closed for several months.  She writes:  " I never did get the “flu” as such.  I slept upstairs while Mother took care of the sick of our family in beds here and there downstairs.  Each morning she would call me and ask, “How do you feel?”, and then I’d almost wish I had the “flu” for I knew the cows and horses had to be fed and it was almost 2 blocks away up to the creek where they had to be watered, (as our water had frozen in the taps outside.) ---Page 230 and 231... 

     This I did for our horses and cows as well as the close neighbors.  I also had to take a hammer or club to break the ice in the creek so they could get a drink.  Then take them back home, fed, and then put in the shed.  (We were too poor to have a barn.)   Once my brother Earl's wife, Beulah who was a nurse, asked mother if I was old enough to go to Ben Cameron’s, my cousins, and stay with them all night and stay awake to hand them medicine.  He and his pregnant wife and their nine children were down with the flu.  I was 10 years old at the time.  Mother thought it would be okay as they were in the family.  She wanted to help and offered me.

     I remember that night.  Ben and his wife were in bed and their nine children were scattered around every which way.  I remember that Archie, a boy about my age, kept crying with the ear ache.  Beulah came to see how they were about midnight and told me where the doctor was and asked me to go as quick as I could and tell him to come right up to Ben Cameron’s as soon as he could.

     I remember that night, how I hated to go after the doctor.  It was dark, dark, dark, and when I went the barn doors kept opening and then closing with a bang.  Beulah had told me to show the doctor where to come and then go on home and go to bed.  The next morning I learned that Ella Cameron had died, (the mother) soon after the doctor got there.  (Next about her schooldays.) --- pages 233 to 239 in the book .....

dances, parties, school assemblies, plays, wedding, receptions, county fairs, etc.  The building was heated by two pot-bellied wood-burning stoves.  (The above was "print screened" from our book of lives of ancestors.)

     I spent only 2 ½  years in High School.  I had enough credits except ½  unit which could be elective.  (I didn't take classes that would be required now, or that were then by an accredited school.)  (Pal–She told me that the records in high school got burned somehow, and when she went to college, it couldn’t be proved exactly what she had taken in high school and what she had not.)

     So I found myself back in St. George, this time in Junior College.  They permitted me to enter college even though I had not finished High School, with the understanding I'd have the correspondence course finished by the first of the year.  Well, I got in the opera and a Sunday School stage play, etc. etc., and the correspondence course suffered.  As a result I had to literally lock myself during Christmas Holidays and finish it!  I took Seminary from Brother Ward Moody who taught in Panguitch, a man I dearly loved and respected to his dying day.

     College:

     The two years at Dixie were gloriously happy ones for me.  Parties, dates, dances and music, music, music,.  We put on 2 operas that year.  The Chocolate Soldier where I had second lead.  This was my first experience in singing middle part in a trio.  It was with Alta Holt (later Alta Truman) and a Mrs. Haycock they imported to take leading lady.  It was good experience for me and started a life time of singing 2nd soprano in a trio.

     When we took "The Chocolate Soldier" to Cedar City there was a write up in their college paper, which stated in effect:  Ruth Allen from Panguitch, was the most outstanding performer of the cast but had been placed in a secondary role instead of the lead which she richly deserved --  Mr. Mc Allister (Whom we lovingly called Joe Mac) came to me later and said:  "Don't let them sway you; they only did that to get you to come to Cedar next year."  This was probably true, for I was offered a scholarship from Cedar for the next year, but returned to Dixie on the Opera scholarship.

  I also sang duets with Alta on many varied occasions.  Especially funerals.  We got the name "the funeral singers" tacked on to us, when Mr. Reid whom we took a class from at 2 p.m. (the time all funerals were held then) told us, we'd have to choose between his class and singing in funerals, as we were out so much he couldn't give us credit if we weren't there more.  After that when we'd be asked to sing in a funeral we'd explain it to them and invariably either the family or the bishop would go to him and just as often he'd call us together and tell us to go sing.

                  

     The second opera "Lelawala" was an Indian Opera and I was the Indian Princess.  It was a lighter or rather much easier opera.  (Ruth sang “Indian Love Call” in “Lelawala”.)

     And then one very fun thing was a 3 act play put on by the ward I was in, in which I played the comedy role -- (a role that fit me better than a romantic lead.)   I might tell right here an incident that altered my plans and life.  The summer before coming to Dixie College the first year, I had my Patriarchal Blessing.  It stated, in effect, that my talents lay, and my life's work should be in counseling, guiding and teaching the young.  

Being young, I didn't give that as much heed as I should, and when a local traveling theater troop who had seen my performances in the high school opera, etc., offered me a job of traveling with them that winter I was carried away with the idea.  I was 'stage struck.'  (At that time these traveling troops were very common, having prepared about 3 to 5 plays and then traveling from one town to another putting on a different play each night and then going on to the next town to repeat the same.)

     Mother didn't offer me any compromise at all.  Just a flat and final NO.  I was crushed -- I knew she was old fashioned and just   "didn't understand."  (Since then it's been my turn to be old-fashioned and to be behind the times and "not understand."  Now my 3 girls are in that stage.)  But although I thought mother very unreasonable I knew her decision was final.  So my next argument was to go in nurse's training.  With this, mother (bless her wisdom) said, "I think you are a little young to go alone this year -- You come with us to St. George.  (She was coming with the "3 little girls" as LaVern,  Adelia, and I were called,) and then next year if you still want to, you can go in nurse's training.  About this time a group from Dixie College came out to give a program and recruit students.  I think mother must have told them of my love for the stage.  Anyway, they singled me out and told me of the Opera and Dramatics departments and promised me an opportunity to participate.

     Well, we arrived in St. George, and true to their promise I was soon in full swing "on the stage".  I had an opportunity to go each Saturday to "Joe Mac's" house and do house work to pay for my beloved vocal lessons.  However, soon after I started this, my hands and arms got so bad with eczema that I could not have them in water, which was of course necessary.  -- So what to do?  Why LaVern came to my rescue -- bless her heart.  She took over the dirty job of cleaning house for me while I faced the footlights and the compliments.  Bless her, she has been doing hard jobs for me (and without being asked I might add) ever since.  What a self sacrificing person she is, and how I love her.  She seems to be happiest when she's working and sacrificing for someone else.  I hope this is so, for if it is, she leads a happy life, for this is how her life has been spent always -- always thinking of and doing for someone else.

       LaVern is on the left, and Ruth, (mother) on the right, when they were in college.

     After the first year of college I got the coveted music scholarship.  In hard times like they were (it was always hard times for our family) one doesn't just say  "no thank you" to a college scholarship.  So back to Dixie I went.    Year number two found me taking teacher's training.  Then, one could get a teaching certificate in 2 years.  So the spring of 1928 I graduated from Dixie with a teaching certificate.  

     I learned one lesson on honesty during my early days at Dixie.  A group of us went down in the fields one Saturday for an early morning breakfast.  What a good time, and how beautiful the apples were!  We "borrowed" all we could eat but decided some would taste good at home.  I had taken my only coat.  There was a hole in the pocket big enough for an apple to go through, so into the pocket and on through they went.  The lining being sewed to the coat made a good sack.  Well, by the time our games were finished, it was warm and the apples were heavy so we decided to leave them and get Burnell, (who I had a date with that night) to bring me back in his old Model T and get them.  (Yes a teacher was with us as a chaperon, but I don't remember her disagreeing with the plan.) 

      Well, when we went back, the coat and apples were gone.  We could have stood the loss of the apples, but I knew winter was coming soon and absolutely there was no way to get another coat.  After a few weeks, a few prayers and a few cold walks to school and evening activities, we were invited to a party down to George Wells.  There in their hall way hung my coat.  Yes, it had been their orchard we  had visited.  Oh, how I hated to face the music, but fact it I must, and I did.  I still can see George laugh, but Brother and Sister Wells (his parents) were more gracious.  They accepted my admittance of guilt and my apology -- gave me a bag of apples to take home and a coat to wear.  It was a cold night that night, but I felt warm for the first time since the incident (warm from my heart out, I mean.)

                                “The Chocolate Soldier”

     I have been a serious minded person, yet I enjoy a good laugh.  In my final year at Dixie College I was taking one of the leading roles in the Opera, "The Chocolate Soldier"    We had gone to Cedar City, Kanab, Las Vegas, and I'm not sure where else and were playing for the 10th night in St. George. (Ruth said -- now the sugar beet plant, but it since has been restored to the Opera House, and used for community events.)  We were all tired, even the master of ceremonies I guess, for before starting he came out and announced, "I see several of you have been several times.  I trust you will enjoy it just as much tonight," to which someone in the audience yelled out, ", If  you get tired of the play, just watch Ruth Allen's mother,  -- that's a good show itself."  Of course, Mother had been there every night sitting on one of those high booths against the wall in the front balcony in her reserved front seat.  Her face radiated her enjoyment and the pride only a mother understands. (Parents of all performers had free reserved seats.  In it's restored form, the current Opera house doesn't have a balcony.  It also used to be moveable, so they could -- from some gears, etc., in the basement, make the back end higher, so people could see better from the back.)  

     

     It was this night that as usual I pushed "The Chocolate Soldier", and said "Oh, you big piece of swiss Cheese!"  (Alfred Morris, a talented local businessman, was a Swiss soldier in the opera.  He was not a student but an outstanding vocalist brought in to take the lead.)

     As I pushed him this night, and I know it was no harder than usual, he fell to the stage floor, struggled but had to have help to get up.  He had worked all day each day and performed at night, and I guess resorted to a little? Dixie wine to see him through this last night.  The curtains had to be drawn while some of the boys helped him up and to a chair off the stage.  Bird Terry came on to the stage, made up some lines of his own and stole the show, until "The Chocolate Soldier," could walk steady enough to resume his part, muttering to the audience, "I've always known that girl would be the death of me!", but on with the show!  Bird's ad-libbing saved us all from the humiliation of such a thing happing in a Church College play (at that time the College was run by the Church.) "Bird" Terry was Elvis Bird Terry, who ended up teaching music at BYU, and was a well known musician throughout Utah.  (See on google)

This is mother in a costume for an opera.  We don't know which opera, or who is standing with her,

     The last opera given in the, then famous, old Opera House was in the spring of 1928 and was Rip Van Winkle, in which I played the comedy role.  Dilworth Snow as Rip was Superb.  He couldn't or didn't memorize his songs however, and had them printed on tiny cards that he held in the palm of his hand, changing cards quickly each time he went off stage!

Another musical near tragedy -- :  This time in a funeral.  Melba Baker, Alice Cannon and I were up singing the song, "Whispering Hope."  Just as we came to the lines, "Then when the night is upon us, Why should the heart sink away?"  At this moment one of the mourners fainted and was being carried out by 3 or 4 men.  At "Why should the heart sink" Alice, a fun loving person, who stood in the middle, nudged (hard) Melba and I in the ribs.  I've never been so afraid of a number being spoiled with laughter, except when I used to held my breath for fear Pal, Vina or Mavis would laugh while perform. (We three sisters sang in a trio during for several years.  I'll tell about that later).

     I can't say that I've had any real tragedies in my life.  I've gone through sorrows, disappointments and hardships, but looking back on them from my vantage point of years they were probably blessings that have helped make me more charitable and compassionate. "  (More of her life to come,)

Quite a bit of the above was quoted from Ruth's life story she wrote.  I'll continue later, with other stories from her remarkable life.  If you'd like to read the above blogs, you'll begin to understand what a remarkable woman she was!