Mary Ruth Adams Minter

Spent 4 years in the U. S. Navy, lived in New York City awhile, got married to an Army officer, and we were stationed in Maryland, Okinawa, El Paso, Texas, Germany, and back to Maryland. We lived in Chattanooga twice while my husband was in Vietnam. Got divorced, then worked in Medical Records of a hospital until I retired in 2009. Still live in Maryland as do my 3 children and their families, along with 7 grandchildren. I have been doing genealogy research since 1977 and sometimes do scrapbooking and sewing.

I used to sing with various groups and on one occasion Beverly Kosky, Lew Stamm and I were singing at some kind of function and in the middle of the song, the other two clowns decided to stop singing and leave me singing alone......I would now call this premeditated.

Our class seemed to be fairly close and we knew almost everybody...including students before and after us. Once when we lived in Okinawa, I took a trip to Hong Kong, and 10,000 feet (or whatever) feet up in the air, as I got back on the plane from a stop in Taiwan where I got off the plane to meet my brother, someone stopped and asked me if my name was Ruth Adams and did I graduate from Kirkman in 1956. Don't remember his name but he graduated a year or so after me.

I joined the Navy in Chicago where my Mother was living at the time and travelled to Bainbridge, MD for boot camp. They asked me how long I wanted to join for and I told them 4 years because I thought that's what I had to do, but found out afterwards I could join for less time. After boot camp I went back up to Great Lakes, Ill for Hospital Corps training and then was stationed at the Naval Hospital at Quantico, VA for almost 2 years where I worked on the women's wards, pediatrics, and in the clinics and went on ambulance runs if we had to transport females to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Then I was stationed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal where I was on military transport ships (MSTS) taking troops and dependents to various places....like Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Panama, Puerto Rico and Cuba. While in some of those countries, we took some interesting trips. While we were docked in England, some of us took a train to London and the craziest thing I remember is that we went to the Tower of London and were told it would close in 18 minutes, so we ran through there in 18 minutes! Couldn't do that today.

Another time we took an overnight train from Bremerhaven, Germany to Berlin. This was right before the Berlin Wall was put up because we were able to go into West and East Berlin. We knew about the problems there but didn't know how bad it was until we heard about the wall. Strangely enough, none of my photos came out that I took while we were there. I always said after the wall went up that they had somehow zapped them so they wouldn't come out.....of course, I don't know how they would have done it, but for not a single picture to come out of the whole roll?

While on the ships besides working in the clinics and making formula for the babies on board, I loved to help organize talent shows and we also had dances on the ship just for the ship's military and civilian personnel....not the troops or families. We did get some of the many talented troops in the talent shows and I was convinced some of the guys did it just to get out of that lower deck so we managed to use all the ones that tried out, even if they were just back-up singers or guitar players.


All in all, I was glad in the end that I had signed up for 4 years because I had such a great time. Wow, I should write a book about my time in the Navy!

Yes

Type Your Answer Here how many 7

Commercial.

We were close with a LOT of people, but I guess my closest friends were Joyce Hasty and Beverly Kosky. I look back at my yearbook and am amazed at all the ones I considered my friends. People who were in grades below or above us were friends. I can't emphasize just how such an amazing school this was. Problems that occur in schools today were unheard of back then. I was in the Glee Club and we went on several trips and had a great time. So many friendships back then. When I look back at my yearbooks and all the things people wrote in it, I must have been the sweetest girl at KVHS because almost everyone wrote about how sweet I was! Just looked at the teachers in my yearbook and even one of them wrote "Love to a sweet girl"...... I look back on my 4 years there as a wonderful time in my life. I had a lot of favorite teachers but I guess my two favorites were Mrs. Angle from Sociology and Glee Club because I truly loved to sing and she was wonderful, and Miss Roesslein in History......Miss Roesslein made interesting what could have been a boring subject. Too bad there isn't a page devoted to the teachers because in looking back, I remember most of them even after almost 58 years! I retired in 2009 and can't remember most of the people I worked with!