Ruby receives a rose from a friend (L)
and two girls sing happy birthday (R)
By Bob Weaver
Ruby Husk Craddock celebrated her 96th birthday this past weekend at Bramblewood Village, with family members and friends sharing a birthday cake and ice cream.
"You know, I might even live to be a hundred," she said. "I never expected to live this long."
Ruby was born deep in a backwoods hollow between the Village of Hur and Barnes Run, the daughter of the late Everly and Belle Adams Husk.
"I was born at home in 1911, like everyone else," she said, with neighbors coming to assist with the delivery.
The house was a small four-room dwelling, heated with a woodburner and lit with kerosene lamps.
Her parents were hardworking farmers, respected community members who worked for the Hardman family, they moved to Washington County, Ohio in the 1950s to seek a better life.
Special friends pay their respects (L)
Ruby receives her birthday cake (R)
The Husk's lived at the tail-end of a grape-vine telephone line stretched from the Hur switchboard office, attached to trees and hooked to their crank'em up phone.
Belle Husk, not unlike most of the women in the neighborhood, used the "modern" device as her link to the outside world, conversing with her neighbors everyday on the party line.
Everly Husk was a sturdy mountain man, who was known to shed his shoes come early spring and "break-in" his feet going barefoot throughout summer. His voice could often be heard echoing in the holler, singing hymns as he walked out to work or to go the store at Hur.
Ruby married Howard Craddock, now deceased, first living at Altizer and moving to Annamoriah in 1953.
She has a surviving sister, Wano Husk McCoy and a surviving brother, James, both of Ohio. Her other siblings, now deceased, include Leno Buck Husk and Grace Husk Nitz.
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