Ruth Darlene Bloom Owings

RUTH DARLENE BLOOM OWINGS was born on July 7, 1924, in a sod house, on the eastern Colorado prairie. Her mother, Mildred King Bloom, died of rheumatic heart disease when Ruth was eight years old, leaving her to mother her three younger siblings: Ilah, Fern, and Ovid, who precede her in death. Hers was a farming family, and they went through the dust bowl and depression together. She discovered, in a college sociology class, that she had been raised in poverty. She said she never felt poor, because "we had what everybody else had." She went through elementary school in a one room school house. For high school, several families pitched in together to buy an automobile, which Ruth used to drive herself and the other high school aged youngsters in her community, to the district high school in Akron, Colo. Her father, John Bloom (deceased), got a job with the Colorado highway department and the family moved to Fairplay, in the Rocky mountains. The second world war began, and she and some friends took a bus to Oakland, Calif., where she worked in the shipyards as a "Rosie Riveter." Then, she enlisted in the Coast Guard SPARs, and served two years in the medical corps. She said her team mostly treated otherwise healthy young men for venereal diseases. When the war ended, she was discharged, and as a veteran, was eligible for the G.I. Bill, which she used to go to the University of Denver. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree, and married William Adolf "Dolph" Owings (deceased). Dolph got a commission in the United States Air Force and served in the Strategic Air Command, and the family lived on or near air bases in Germany, the Midwest, the West, and the South. She birthed five children: Richard (married to Binnie Owings), Steven (Tammy Gattis Owings), Karen Owings (James Swindoll), and Anne Owings Wilson, all living. Her fifth child, Brian Owings, is deceased. She divorced and her children grew up and left home. She returned to college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and obtained a teaching degree. She worked as Education Director for the Methodist Children's home in Little Rock, and retired after 20 years of service. She traveled with, and enjoyed, the close company of Craig Borden (now deceased). She was a skilled potter and a member of Master Gardeners. She attended LifeQuest. She lived, since 1969, in Little Rock, 40 years in a log house, between Stagecoach Rd. and Fouche Creek, and then 12 years in a lake side home in Spring Valley, and then her final three years in Presbyterian Village. The family appreciates the staff of Presbyterian Village and Hospice Home Care. She swam across the lake at Spring Valley every day, weather permitted, without a life jacket (over the vigorous protests of her children), until the age of 93, though she did have to tie a rope around a tree to help pull herself up the bank as she got older. She is survived by grandchildren, Richard and Alexander Owings, and Rachel Owings Millner (their mother, Debra Velez Owings, is deceased), Scott and Fabian Wilson, Adrianne Owings, Stephanie Harris, and Dianne Swindoll Kennedy. Michael and Ben Swindoll, and Christopher Owings are deceased. She is survived by great-grandchildren, Charlie, Maggie, and Lizzy Millner, and Peter, Henry, and Jack Kennedy, Sebastian Sabby, and Jeffrey, Jade, and Zander Wilson. Other special friends were cousins, Betty Baerg (deceased), and Cleo Huff (deceased), and niece, Sheila Steinberg. She will be interred by family April 17, 2024. A memorial reception (with lunch fare) will be held at the home of Richard and Binnie Owings, 46 Norfork Drive, Maumelle Ark., April 20, 2024, at 12-2 p.m. All family, friends and well-wishers are invited. Arrangements are under the direction of RuebelFuneralHome.com.