By Deborah Larsen
This series of posts will introduce readers to some of the people listed on Rochester’s World War II Honor Roll & Monument, which RAHS has been restoring and will unveil in a community-wide ceremony later this year. For now, we will highlight the stories of the people behind the WWII Honor Roll names in a series of profiles posted here, on Instagram, and on our website.
If you have a family member listed on the WWII Honor Roll and would like to share their story, please fill out our online form here: https://forms.gle/HQk9jrRvseZ6aiHh7.
****
Ruth Marie Jubb
Ruth Marie Jubb was born April 5, 1910, in Muskegon County, Michigan, the daughter of Raymond and Katherine Caughey Jubb. She attended nursing school in Grand Rapids and the graduate nursing program at the University of Michigan.
Ruth came to Rochester, Michigan, about 1937, serving as a school nurse at Woodward School and as public health nurse for the school district. She also taught a course in nursing procedures for girls at Rochester High School.
Rochester’s board of education granted Ruth a leave of absence to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in June 1943. She was stationed at Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, where she was appointed director of cadet nurse training in 1944. In March 1946, while stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, she served as a nursing superintendent in the Army’s 600-bed 97th General Hospital. While in Germany, Ruth attended the war crimes trials underway at Nuremburg, and wrote home to her parents that the infamous Nazi leaders she saw there appeared diminished from the mental picture she had formed of them. “Certainly I expected to see men with stronger personalities than those who sat huddled together. Goering, Streicher and the others . . . they looked like the run of the mill German men one sees on the streets.”
Ruth remained in the Army Reserve Medical Corps after the war and served with distinction. She was elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1960.
At the same time, Ruth served as supervisor of health for Grand Rapids Public Schools. Her duties included the rollout of the Salk polio vaccine in the school system.
After a lifetime dedicated to public service, Ruth Marie Jubb died in Grand Rapids in 2002. She was laid to rest at St. Mary’s Cemetery in her native Muskegon.
Photo courtesy of Richard Mullally