Collection is open for research.
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.
An incomplete transcript (14 pages) is available for in-person use at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Oral history interview with Ruth G. Fletcher, by Patricia Keith, SR 9128, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Ruth G. Fletcher was conducted by Patricia Keith on April 24, 1980, as part of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library's oral history program.
In this interview, Fletcher discusses learning to fly airplanes at the Salem Airport from 1930 to 1931, as well as her memories of pilot and flight instructor Tex Rankin and of the Swan Island Airport in Portland. She shares the reasons why she didn't pursue a pilot's license and also briefly talks about her work in nursing and mortuary services. She describes her experience parachute jumping at the Oregon State Fair, then closes the interview by talking about how airplane technology changed the skills needed by pilots over the 20th century.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,