Mrs. Ruth Schlup

In mid-September of 1920 Ruth Louise Thayer was born on a smallish farm near Elm Creek in the sand hills of the Nebraska panhandle to Oren Mortimer and Tinnie Belle (Van Matre) Thayer. With her two older brothers she enjoyed a simple life, living off the fruits of the farm, nearly oblivious to the effects that the Great Depression was having on urban America. She attended country school some miles away which required her to walk during good weather and go horseback during bad. Being an avid reader and a lover of learning, she graduated high school at the age of sixteen and left home to enter the larger world.
Ruth was promised lodging by family friends who resided in the growing community of Newcastle, Wyoming. Upon her arrival she sought gainful employment, finding it in the role of a telephone operator in the building which now houses the Hansen & Peck Law offices. Over the course of the next six years she undoubtedly accepted requests for phone call placement at least 50,000 times with a smile in her voice: "Number Please".
Sometime in '40 or '41 she met a man twelve years her senior and in February of 1942 Ruth became Mrs. Ralph Lee Schlup. Their life together was interrupted by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and her husband's subsequent voluntary enlistment in the US Army. Recognizing the approaching solitude and sharing Ralph's patriotic zeal, Ruth and another telephone operator, Doris Dollison, chose to participate in the war effort by volunteering for the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. Her military career was cut short when, sometime after being sworn in as a WAAC, she learned that she was carrying the couple's first child. She was honorably discharged from the service in New Jersey and made the journey to Salem, Oregon, where she spent the rest of World War II with her brother's family. When reunited in Wyoming, Ruth continued to work as a telephone operator until automation made that job a relic of the past.
By 1964 the couple had continued to prosper, had long since purchased a home in Greenwood Addition, and were raising seven children: Darrel, Ronald, Margaret, Patricia, Edward, Richard and Robert. With beginnings in 1948 and continuing through 2006, at least one of Ruth's progeny (children or grandchildren) was enrolled in the Newcastle school system. She was very proud and happy to see the kids educated.
Once she became a full-time housewife Ruth found satisfaction and happiness in playing the piano, performing extensive research into the genealogy of her forebears, serving on the Weston County Library Board, and in the good works of her church. At one point, in her seventies, she left Newcastle for a year in Salt Lake City where she did her part in expanding the extensive LDS genealogical database. She also physically participated in the construction of the present church buildings near the intersections of highways 16 & 85.
Many of the people who may read this will remember all of the "baby boom kids" who grew up on Wood and Cambria Streets in the 50s and 60s. She was one who could be depended upon to provide an icy glass of Koolade or access to a bathroom to those many kids (playing with her kids) who were shared by Ruth and the other young mothers in the neighborhood of the Greenwood Grocery store.

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