Rutha at Twenty

Rutha Wait Finlayson
Lander College, 1925

" Rutha possesses a laughing sunny disposition and rare musical talents.  She has the art of so adapting herself that she is in harmony with her surroundings."
-Lander College Annual

Miss Rutha Wait Finlayson was soon to become Mrs. Ernest Dyal, soon to become widowed by twenty-two.  I remember her voice and her laughter, her deep love for music.  Her sunny disposition though was wounded when the bullet passed through her husband's head and he fell lifeless into her lap. She never married again.

I knew Rutha, but not the adaptable woman who was described "in harmony with her surroundings".  She went on afterward, taught voice and piano like her mother.  She lived on, kept her faith and laughed ~ but there was always an anxiousness about her.

I try not to remember her merely for that tragedy, but that sad shadow was always about her. Whenever our Columbia kin came for a visit, we were told to put away all our toy guns. We all did our part to keep that shadow to the back of her. 

One day we'll meet Rutha anew.  We'll see her without the shadow, long since adapted to the harmony that is experienced in Heaven's light.  We shall soon see her smile like we've never saw it here.


"Oh, there is something in that voice that reaches the innermost recesses of my spirit!"