Ruby Stratton Curtis was a successful business owner in Andrews, and she was raised in Robbinsville.
She was one of nine children born to Bertha Odom Stratton and Jack D. Stratton. She had seven sisters and one brother.
The Cherohala Skyway in Graham County is part of the Stratton Family History. Absolum Stratton, who was Ruby’s great-great-great-grandfather, owned Stratton Meadows, which is located near the top of the skyway. He was buried in the meadows, as his son hollowed out a log for a casket, and by Absolum’s request, they turned the homemade casket so that his head was buried in North Carolina and his feet in Tennessee, since the state line crossed his property.
In 1949, Ruby Stratton was chosen as homecoming queen for Robbinsville High School. She met an “Andrews” boy, who by all accounts was rebelliously handsome and had nerves of steel. Harold Lloyd Curtis had returned from World War II and decided to take flying lessons from Edgar Wood Sr. when the airport was just a dirt runway.
In an effort to impress Miss Stratton, Ruby said, “Harold would fly right down over the high school in Robbinsville during lunch while everyone was sitting outside, and he would do stunts over the school. I would be so
embarrassed.”
It must have worked because Ruby agreed to marry Harold, who was working at the time doing tunnel work. Ruby left the mountains, and the couple married in Cincinnati in 1949.
“We went to Sears and looked at a set of wedding rings that cost $325, but I told Harold that I wanted a house trailer instead, because we needed a home of our own. We bought a new 29-foot Prairie Schooner that we could pull behind our 1940 Pontiac,” Ruby said.
The couple traveled from job to job all over New England, including the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Scranton, and worked on the Fort Pitt Tunnel in Pittsburg, as well as the tunnel at Niagara Falls, N.Y.
In 1958, Ruby and Harold decided to move back to Andrews with their five children.
“We had traveled so much to jobs all over the country that we just could not do it anymore,” she said. “We needed to settle in one place. We started building a house on Happy Top in Andrews during November, but Harold had to leave to take another job in Niagara Falls. We didn’t have the money to brick the house, so he had to go back and work for a while.”
Ruby was a mountain woman born and bred whose courage knew no bounds. Harold had been working away again to make money for their growing family, and he had been gone a long time. So in 1960, the day after John F. Kennedy was elected president, she closed up the house, packed up her seven kids and hit out for California in a 1956 Ford station wagon.
“We traveled on Route 66 to Orville, Calif., to meet Harold. I didn’t have any luggage, so I packed the kids clothes in large paper bags, and before we even got to Chattanooga, Tenn., they had strewn their clothes all over the car,” Ruby said. “We stayed about a year and moved back to Andrews for good in 1961, then in 1964 we opened Valley Mobile Homes.”
Ruby was the perfect example of a working mother and an astute business woman. The nine children remember their mother getting up at the crack of dawn and cooking a large breakfast before sending them off to school.
Harold Curtis died on March 12, 2006, and at age 90, Ruby remains the cornerstone of the Curtis family.
She is a native of the Appalachian Mountains and the matriarch of her family, whose strength and character is beyond reproach. She has been likened to “Miss Ellie” in the television show Dallas, because when she spoke the family listened.
It would take a 500-page novel to touch on the life of Ruby Stratton Curtis, who has journeyed through life with an iron will and faced hardships with gentle reserve. She has always been a strong woman who continues to be guided by her faith and Christian upbringing.
We wish her many more birthdays.
Kandy Barnard is a columnist for the Cherokee Scout. To talk about the Andrews Valley, call her at 361-3268 or email kandybarnard@gmail.com.