Ruth Simon Naveen

Last edit of this site 2024.JUN.29

These are Gary Simon’s recollection of his Aunt Ruthie, written in January, 2021.  Much information was supplied by her son Ron and her daughter Jo Naveen-Marble, whose insights are below.

Ruth Simon was born June 20, 1917, in Mocanaqua, Pennsylvania.

She was not quite twelve years old when both parents died.  She and her sister Ida were the ones to discover their father’s suicide.  Ruth and Ida were close for the rest of their lives.  She went to Tampa to live with her sister Esther Simon Wohl and brother-in-law Isidor Wohl.

Ruth was averse to being photographed, and there are very few pictures of her. These two were supplied by her daughter Jo Naveen Marble in June, 2024.

Aunt Ruthie was in my life beginning from childhood.  Through some informal arrangement, she was called Ruthie to distinguish her from Uncle Nate’s wife, Aunt Ruth. 

Uncle Harry and Aunt Ruthie were fixtures in our family.

Our family and hers lived on opposite sides of the Susquehanna River until we moved to the Kingston side in 1953.  Our long-time home was 233 James Street, and the Naveen family was at 629 Gibson Avenue.  The distance was about three blocks. 

The Naveen kids Ron and Jo were (and still are, of course) at about the same ages as me and my sister.  Those cousins were frequently in our house, and we were frequently in theirs.  There were many wiffle ball games in each back yard.  Board games and snacks happened at each home. 

After a few years, the Naveen family moved to a larger house at 45 James Street.  I recall the cavernous indoor spaces at that house.  The back yard was smaller, and not workable for wiffle ball games.  Perhaps we were bigger and stronger by then, needing larger field dimensions.

Aunt Ruthie hosted us for occasional meals at her house.  I remember especially her Friday night specialty, chicken soup with embryo eggs.  These eggs were all firm yolk and no shell.  I cannot recall this delicacy at any place other than Aunt Ruthie’s dining room.

She tended to disappear when cameras were brought out.  This aversion to photographs means that we have relatively few images of her.

Cigarettes and coffee were her constant companions.  I have never known anyone with a stronger coffee compulsion.  Her home seemed to have a pot of coffee brewing at all times.  The recollection is that she drank about eight cups per day.  She died too young, and nicotine and caffeine may have contributed.

I recall Aunt Ruthie’s obsessive revulsion of Richard Nixon.  The whole country came to dislike Mr. Nixon, but she may have been one of the early anti-Nixon rebels.  As I remember, she cut out magazine pictures of Mr. Nixon and rearranged them in insulting ways.  I recall a picture of a golfer setting the backswing for a tee shot.  In this picture she had pasted Mr. Nixon’s face on the ball.

Harry died suddenly at home of a heart attack on January 29, 1966.  The trauma of that day remains in many memories.  Daughter Jo ran out in the snow to get the doctor who lived a few houses away, nearer to Rutter Avenue.  Abe’s wife Fay, with three-year-old Laurie in tow, had stopped by the house just to say hello.  Fay had to console Ruth and then go out to the street to bring back Jo.  After a time, a hearse had parked in the driveway, to be discovered by Harry’s shocked sister Virginia (Becky) Naveen Nelson.

Jo recalls the events of Ruthie’s life thereafter.   She sold the home at 45 James Street and moved to a local apartment.  In 1970 she suffered her first stroke, leading to her moving to Tampa to live near her sister Esther.  She became an apartment manager for a co-owned apartment complex in Tampa’s Colonial Village.  She had a further blackout incident and was advised to get a medical check.  The checkup did not happen;  perhaps she had TIA (transient ischemic attack).   She did not, in Jo’s judgment, take very good care of her physical self.  The weekend of Labor Day, 1977,  she was found in her apartment by Aunts Esther and Ida.  She had suffered an aneurysm, and brain surgery was done at St. Joseph Hospital on Yom Kippur Day, 1977.  The surgery successfully clipped the aneurysm, but the damage had already been done.  She lost all short term memory.  She was placed into a Tampa care facility and then subsequently moved to a care facility in Bradenton.   She died, possibly from a heart attack, on November 28, 1979, in Bradenton and was buried next to Harry in Pennsylvania. She was only 62.  She and Harry are interred in the Temple Israel Jewish Cemetery is Swoyersville, Pennsylvania.

Ruth had two terrible shocks in her life.  She was not yet twelve when she discovered her father’s suicide, and not quite fifty when her husband Harry had a fatal heart attack in their home.

Her son Ron adds addition thoughts.

While I liked her chicken soup, the egg part was very much not a favorite. Indeed, I think much of my ongoing pickiness as an eater stems from difficulties with some of what we repetitively ate. Then again, those were the days before more enlightened and healthier eating habits.

She did like her coffee and cigarettes, though I remember the latter as more of a constant. She seemed to always be smoking and, even on her death bed, with tobacco long banned, she nonetheless kept snapping her fingers, seeking another smoke.

Nixon is a good example of how she wouldn’t let go of a grudge. This seemed based more on Nixon’s perennial ‘five o’clock shadow’ — his appearance, than on anything substantive like political views.  And she could let loose when others slighted — or seemed to slight — her.   One connective ritual was her getting together with brother Abe each and almost every morning for coffee in our kitchen, after Abe had made his rounds collecting parts at Stull Brothers and before he headed on to Moc.  They were incredibly close and God knows what they must have discussed in those sessions.

Daughter Jo’s recollections are fascinating as well.

I have different memories – and I was with her all of the time after Dad’s passing on January 29, 1966.

Mom I remember being the strict disciplinarian – Dad was more of a soft soul.  Dad was the calmer of the two – and he was definitely relied on heavily by his siblings.  I remember spending a lot of time with Dad – going to his office with him, and being out in the yard with him.  I know I have felt a huge void in my life when he passed away when he was 55 and I was 14.

I remember Dad collapsing on the upper stairway, I ran down the street to our doctor’s home office, in the snow – to get help.   No EMS in those days!  Someone did show up, but he had already passed.  I was downstairs and recall Mom walking down the staircase, with the color draining out of her face.  Sorry, this is just too awful.

Dad had a love of animals and working on fixing items – from which I probably gained the love of animals and the knack of using tools to fix things.  Mom did not grow up with animals, and she did not have the intrinsic love of them.

I was not as picky of an eater – I pretty much ate everything!   I remember her teaching me to bake – as she really excelled in that area.

She did LOVE chocolate – and even after her aneurysm, with a lot of her memories gone, she still held tightly to the love of chocolate!  

She and Aunt Ida always had fun shopping for clothing – they both wore the same size shoe – they would each wear a matching pair of shoes – one in black maybe – one in navy.  Then, they would switch one of the shoes, resulting in each of them having a pair of shoes with one black and one navy.  They would then go into a shop asking for an identical pair of matched shoes to the mismatched pair.

I do remember the ‘parties’ that Aunt Ida, Uncle Milton, and my parents had at one of the beach hotels in Pinellas county.  They had quite the weird costumes and seemingly joked around to the max.

Mom did love her weekly bridge games with the ‘ladies.’  I also remember her hosting family meals in the dining room at 45 James Street.  

Mom and Abe were extremely close, as Ron mentioned.

Yes, I do remember the cigarettes and coffee.

I remember also a Thanksgiving we celebrated at Aunt Ida’s house.  Mom and Aunt Ida were taking the turkey out of the oven, and it dropped on the floor.  They quickly started laughing, put the turkey back on the platter and served it!  I happened to see this;  I do not think anyone else was a witness. I am definitely a composite of both parents and their personalities!  However, a much healthier eater!

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