Matrilineal Monday - Celebrating a milestone birthday

Today my mother turns 90 years old!  Yes, that's right - 90.  9/10 of a century.  Nine decades.
THE BIG NINE-OH!

When Ruth Steinbrecher was born in 1925, Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States.  When he was inaugurated for his second term a month later, he was the first to have his inaugural address broadcast on radio.  Prohibition was well established, and Al Capone was taking over the Chicago bootlegging racket.

It cost 2 cents to mail a letter.  A loaf of bread was 10 cents and a pound of beef was 39cents.  A half gallon of milk was 28 cents.

F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, and the New Yorker magazine published their first issue.

Chrysler corporation produced their first car, and the first double-decker busses appeared in London.

You could order a three bedroom house from the Sears catalog and build it yourself for $2000.

A lot has changed in the last ninety years!

When Ruth graduated from High School in 1942, the country had just entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Men were signing up to fight "over there" and women were helping with the war effort at home by joining the work force, planting victory gardens, and rationing.

Ruth herself entered the work force by working as a bookkeeper for Buddy's box lunch (a nascent catering company).  There she met Donald Ormsby as the result of a wrong number, and they were married in 1950.

Ruth and Don raised 2 daughters and his son.  He died in 1988, and she has been going strong ever since.  As of now, she has 7 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.

To help celebrate her birthday - after all, what does a 90 year old lady really need? - her daughters came up with 2 things to make it special.

My younger sister Robin planned a card shower.  Notes were sent to everyone we knew to send her a birthday card - whether they know Ruth or not.  As of today, she has received 92 cards from across the country, and is having a lot of fun going to the mailbox every day.

I had planned to take her to lunch at Shorty's BBQ - one of her favorite restaurants.  Unfortunately, northwest Ohio is still digging out from a major snowstorm, so we won't be going today.  We'll try again in a couple days.  As she says - she's old enough to understand that her birthday doesn't have to be celebrated on the exact day.