Ruby Evelyn Christenson
Port Townsend, Washington
Nov. 20, 1923 – May 21, 2016
You can take the lady out of the South, as Doug Christenson did when he married Ruby Evelyn Gatlin on Valentine’s Day 1946, and brought her back to Mercer Island, but you can’t take the South out of the lady.
When Ruby Evelyn Christenson moved from this world into the next, on the morning of May 21, 2016, she took her Georgia charm, wit and kindness along with her. But she left a “heartful” of memories of the way she loved everyone without condition, and reared three girls and a boy without raising her hand or voice.
Ruby was born at home in Fitzgerald, Georgia, to Thelma McRae Gatlin and Jesse Pope Gatlin. She was the oldest of five children. When she was three years old, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and then to Miami, Florida where Ruby spent most of her childhood.
She told stories of her family eating nothing but cornbread and syrup during the Great Depression, sent to her family by relatives. She recalls going to bed hungry most of the time during those years. Little Ruby picked cotton at a relative’s farm in Georgia and, when her parents packed the kids into the car and traveled north trying to find work, she lived for a while in Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cape May, New Jersey.
During that trip north, the family had to sleep in the car, but they got to see a lot of the country, including Niagara Falls, Annapolis, Washington, D.C., and the World’s Fair in Chicago.
When she was in the sixth grade, Ruby began her lifelong love of music, especially opera. She was in the high school Glee Club and sang with the Miami Opera at age 17, where she was paid five dollars for each performance. Her glee club traveled all over Florida, presenting operettas, where she met many celebrities while she was a performer. The group sang songs in several languages, including Spanish, Italian, Latin, and French. Later in life, when living on Mercer Island, she sang with the Lake Washington Singers, a women’s a cappella group.
In high school she was a majorette with the Miami Drum and Bugle Corps, and marched at halftime in the Orange Bowl game. She loved to write and was assistant editor of her school newspaper.
In December 1941, she was headed for the beach in Miami with friends when Pearl Harbor was bombed. “Some in my class went to war,” she says, “and some died for their country.” She worked with the USO while at Highland High School, including teaching the servicemen to dance and playing ping-pong with them.
She received both the Music Medal and the Journalism Medal upon her high school graduation, and was awarded a scholarship to Northwestern University. However the country’s leaders were asking people to work in the war effort, so she went to Charleston, South Carolina, and worked for the Civil Service, handling requisitions in the supply department.
While in Charleston at the Navy Yard, she had an appointment to audition with Frank Sinatra, but her stage fright kept her from auditioning, so she never met him.
Her first car was a $300, 1936 Ford which she drove to her job at the Naval Air Station at Opa-locka.
While at Opa-locka she saw Amelia Earhart land her plane at the air station on one of her stops flying around the world in 1937. She watched Earhart get out of the plane and walk toward the hangar, and later recalled making eye contact with the aviatrix. She met Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in a nightclub, and she met Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
In 1945, she met Douglas H. Christenson, the man who would be her husband three months later, and who was a naval aviator stationed in Miami. She married him in February 1946, and they enjoyed a loving marriage that lasted 50 years, until Doug's death in 1996. She and Doug spent their honeymoon driving in her ’36 Ford with the floorboards rusted out, from Florida back to Doug’s family home on Mercer Island. Every time they drove through water, it splashed up onto their feet.
They made their home on the north end of Mercer Island, known then as “East Seattle,” next door to Doug's parents at Ivy Hedge on West Mercer Way. Doug built their own home after they cleared the land by hand, with axes and a sickle, and they lived and raised their four children there, overlooking Lake Washington.
Doug finished his Mechanical Engineering degree at the University of Washington while Lynn worked for the King County Medical Bureau. In those days, Ruby went by her middle name of Evelyn, “northernized” to Lynn for short, only reclaiming Ruby later in life.
Doug and Lynn lived an active life of hiking, including to Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier, skiing, boating, golfing and traveling, and taught their four children to love these things, too. Doug and Lynn played golf all over the world, including St. Andrews in Scotland, and every course on the Hawaiian Islands. Lynn sat on the Board of Directors of both Overlake and Fairwood golf clubs. They belonged to the Seattle Opera; after Doug’s passing, Lynn joined Issaquah’s delightful Village Theater.
After Doug died in 1996, Lynn, now preferring Ruby, bought a condo on the island of Oahu, Hawaii and lived there for many years, near her youngest daughter Nancy. She educated herself about Native Hawaiian history and culture and felt a deep bond with Hawaii, saying simply, “I feel comfortable here, like I belong.” Her family enjoyed many wonderful times visiting her there.
She moved to Port Townsend, Wash. for the last ten years of her life, to be near daughter Sue and her family, and closer to the other children and grandchildren in northwest Washington and California. She loved to stroll the beaches collecting small treasures of rocks and shells, loved her lunches out with Sue at the local restaurants, especially the Hudson Point Cafe, and never missed doing the daily crossword puzzle. Her lunchtime photos, typically with an upraised glass of local beer and a cheerful grin were always a hit on her children’s social media pages.
Ruby offered Southern hospitality to her frequent and numerous guests, and to her family, and their families and friends. It was a matter of great humor that she would often inquire whether guests wanted “a sandwich for the road.”
Her children say she never raised her voice at them or spanked them, ever. By the time she had chased them down for some sort of discipline, everyone would be laughing. She offered unconditional love and kindness to all people. Her children say she supported them in whatever they did, even in bad choices they would later admit to making. As her grateful family tells it, Ruby “was the best, most loving mom, mother-in-law, grandmother, and great-grandmother we could have ever wanted.”
The family expresses their gratitude to the staff of Jefferson Healthcare: ACU; Medical Short Stay and Oncology; Dietary; and Hospice, all of whom treated our mother and our family with respect, kindness, dignity, and professionalism.
Please send remembrances in honor of Ruby to the charity of your choice.
No services are planned, at Ruby’s request, but a family memorial will take place later this summer.
Ruby is survived by her brother Philip Gatlin; sister Linda Gatlin Peeples, of Georgia; daughter Sue Christenson Gillard (Steve) of Port Townsend; son Doug Christenson (Fern) of Olympia, Wash.; daughter Lynn Christenson (Mitch Stolen) of Olympia; and daughter Nancy Christenson Clark (Jeffrey) of Honolulu, Hawaii; along with five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
