Archives West Finding Aid

Ruth Geraldean Fletcher, nee Sammons, was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1910, and grew up in Salem. From 1930 to 1931, she learned to fly airplanes and parachute jump at the Salem Airport. In 1930, she graduated from the Bellingham Normal School, and in 1933, she earned a nursing certificate from the Multnomah Hospital School of Nursing. The next year, she also earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon School of Nursing. In 1936, she married Laurence Beebe Fletcher, and in 1940, the couple purchased the Gable Funeral Home. In 1944, after their divorce, Ruth G. Fletcher became the business's sole owner. The next year, she graduated from the San Francisco School of Mortuary Science. She retired from the mortuary business in 1975, and died in 1999.

Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Fletcher in her interview; Fletcher's obituary in The Oregonian, April 17, 1999.