At 100 years of age, Merlin resident Ruth Nagle has accomplished a great deal, and she’s not done yet.
At a birthday party Sunday in Nagle’s honour at St. Ursula’s Church in Chatham, people packed the hall for a chance to wish her well, get a hug and chat a bit. With all the seats in the hall filled, a line up of people waited for a chance to talk with her, in a scene resembling fans waiting for a chance to get an autograph from their favourite author or athlete.
According to Nagle’s son Tom, the centenarian actually is a published author – and wrote her first book at the age of 98. Titled “The Book of Ruth: My Story,” it is full of personal anecdotes and milestones. It was 10 years in the making.
Her son said she embraces life.
“She outlived many of her friends and in 2010 when she got the trailer at Sunny Beach, it added years to her life and life to her years,” Tom Nagle said.
Nagle was born in Merlin in 1917, the child of Irish immigrants and was the youngest in a family of eight siblings. Living on a 200-acre farm with no hydro, phone or indoor plumbing, she truly learned what hard work was all about, and the importance of family.
“I remember my mother advising me in my younger years that I could pick my friends and drop them when I wanted, but if I were smart, I should learn to like my brothers and sisters and even my cousins because I’d always have them in my life,” Nagle wrote in her book. “I think that kind of thinking prompted one of my ‘wisisms’ which goes like this: ‘Be nice to the people you meet on your way up the ladder because you meet the same people on the way down.’”
From the one-room school, SS#7 Raleigh Public School, and buggy rides, Nagle grew up living a rural farm life, and as the youngest, was always wanting to “help” her older siblings. That included teasing from them as well, and she wrote about some of her memories and her mother taking pity on her and putting a stop to it.
With her job of walking racehorses to cool them down, Nagle has many memories of races and horses, but a team of pure white Percheron horses that her neighbour owned was the topic of one particular passage in the book.
“They were in Merlin for the 12th of July Orangemen’s Day Parade and someone asked me to ride one of those horses to lead the parade. Of course, I said, ‘Sure.’ Not until I got home and was teased about riding King Billy’s horse did I realize the horror of what I had done – a good Catholic leading the Orangemen’s Parade – oh my!” Nagle wrote.
From Chatham Vocational School to becoming a stenographer to summers in Erie Beach where she met her husband, Ed Nagle, her life still revolved around family.
Plans to marry Ed in 1942 were interrupted when he was sent overseas when the war started. He wrote her almost every day in letters “full of army life and the countryside” and returned to her after. He sold his blue Chevrolet sports coupe to buy her an engagement ring and they were married in May of 1946, bringing six children into the world.
Nagle’s book, which can be found at the Chatham-Kent Public Library, contains many more interesting and engaging stories, from her first bike when she retired in 1986 and all the adventures that went along with it, to her passion for stamp collecting and the family cottage on the shores of Lake Erie.
