Ruth Mary Hulbert: 28 October 1922 - 12 August 2010.

Ruth was a very special mother, grandmother, sister, spouse... and a friend to very many people. A quiet, unassuming lady, her life somehow touched the lives of very many others. Whether a missionary wife in Nigeria, a pastors wife in Ireland, or the lady who sat on balcony of Stanborough Park church in Watford, somehow her presence made the lives of others more special. As a family we miss here, but we hope the tributes below give you a taste of the life of our mum.

A PowerPoint tribute to Ruth Hulbert with photos of her life from birth through to the marriage of her grandson Steven, earlier this year. (10mb - download to view).

A website set up in tribute to Ruth Hulbert supporting one of her favourite charities. This combines her love of children with her love of West Africa and the time she spent in Mission Service with her husband, Edgar, between 1946 and 1957.

Also - a selection of tributes from friends.

The tribute below was presented by her oldest son, Mervyn Hulbert, at the funeral service on Thursday, 26 August, 2010. His moving speech certainly summed up what the family felt - a moving and emotional picuture and history lesson of Ruth, her life and times - and her deep love.

Mum

You can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends. There is a house in Bridgenorth, a small, historic town not far from where we live in Stourport-on-Severn, which faces immediately onto the street on which it is situated. At the side of the front door is a plaque which says; “Friends welcome any time, relatives by appointment only.” It raises a small smile, an appreciation of wit and humour in me every time I pass it but it also causes me to wonder about the reason for which it was erected. I suspect that it is a warmly meant piece of humour, but, if it is seriously meant, then how sad that would be.

I have, as I suspect most of us do, a finely distilled selection of close friends who are very special to me. These are people, who’s imminent or, even, unexpected arrival fill me with a sense of anticipation and joy. People who know me well. People who hold my history, my foibles, my strengths and weaknesses in the palms of their hands and treat that knowledge, those memories of me with care, love, fondness, respect and sensitivity. People who have seen me through times of happiness, times of distress, times of joy and times of despair, and who have always been there for me and never let me down knowingly. These are people with whom I have laughed, cried and experienced moments of intensity and sensitivity, moments of joy. People who know me inside out and yet can still value me and appreciate me with all my faults and foibles, all my strengths and weaknesses. People who value me for myself and can spot when something is going wrong, when I am making a fool of myself and creating problems that do not exist, and tell me so, lovingly and tactfully so that I can change direction and behave more positively and creatively. In short, people who care for and love me in the same way that that I do them. People, who support me through the difficult times of life and share my joy in the small triumphs that come my way.

This is a description of my family; my brother and my sisters, closer to me than, almost, anyone that I know, kind caring and thoughtful, always looking out for me as I try to do for them. It is a joy and a privilege to be blessed with the support and company of these wonderful people. I cannot imagine where I’d be without them and the one person, above all, who is responsible for this joy, this companionship and this sense of mutual care and responsibility for each other is our mother, Ruth Mary Hulbert, the rock on which our lives are built, the wonderful woman who, not only gave us life, but instilled in each of us the values that inform every waking moment and give us the instinctive capacity to care for each other and all those who also touch our lives and are touched by us.

So!

Given the surreal situation in which I might have the choice to choose a mother to give birth to me, a brother and sisters to live my life with, there would be no thought involved, no hesitation. I would indubitably choose to enter into my life on this earth in exactly the way that I have done for I have been blessed in the richness of life, love and experience that our mother’s gentle and kind influence has granted to all of us. She has given us, each and every one, the qualities which we needed to make us what we are with the capacity to love, care and support each other in the way that we do. We have been the most fortunate of children.

Ruth Mary Hulbert, or Dorland as she was then, arrived to leave her footprint on the earth on the 28th of October 1922 and her step was light and gentle. She arrived just four years after the cessation of the hostilities of the great war of 1914 to 1918 at a time of austerity and deprivation; a time when people held their emotions close to themselves as every family in the land had experienced the loss of loved ones, the despair born of personal tragedies and atrocities perpetrated against young men and women caught up in a conflict of ordinary people against each other as part of the power struggles that, even now, humanity seems to be incapable of avoiding.

Ruth was born into a family where love was fierce but expressed sparingly. She and her siblings all knew they were loved but were rarely directly told. It was a time when Victorian values reigned and children were expected to be seen but not heard. Our mother determined that when her own children were born she would cherish them and leave them in no doubt whatsoever that they were loved. My brother and sisters and I grew up in the warmth of her embraces and murmurings of love for us. She broke the mould from which she came to provide the nurturing, unconditional love that made each of us feel so special and set the emotional foundations on which to build our lives. This expression of the love that every parent feels for their children, but some cannot express, was, probably, the greatest gift she could have given us and continues down through the generations of our family as we, her children, have given to ours the free and uninhibited expressions of our love for them, no doubt to their own great embarrassment at times. What greater gift can one give to a child than to leave them in no doubt that they are loved, cherished and valued?

When our mother took her first tentative steps in life the world was a very different place compared to present times. Most town and city streets were cobblestoned and gas lit. Even the houses were lit by gaslight. Central heating was almost unheard of and soot stained coalmen delivered the coal for the home fires using horse drawn carts. The streets were rarely disturbed by the presence of motor vehicles and to own a telephone was to be a person of status. Winters were cold and beds were inadequately warmed by stone hot water bottles wrapped in covers. Washing of clothes was done by hand and wrung dry by mangles. The summers, of course, were idyllically warm.

At that time the technological advance was just beginning to take its’ first, tentative steps. The span of our mother’s life has witnessed such changes in scientific development that it beggars belief. “Knowledge shall be increased and men shall run to and fro, there shall be wars and rumours of wars”, it states in Daniel and the Gospel of Matthew, and given the circumstances of contemporary conditions globally even the most cynical amongst us must wonder whether the prophecy of the second coming of Christ is about to be imminently fulfilled!

On the 3rd of September 1939, when our mother was 17 years old, she, with the rest of the population of Britain, most of whom remembered the deprivations and tensions, the appalling consequences of the first great conflict so clearly, must have listened with trepidation to the radio broadcast of the then prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, as he said, “This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared, at once, to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently a state of war exists between us.”

Mum lived through the appalling years of the second, world war and the emotional and economic extremes that affected everyone during and after that traumatic period of time. We, her children, and our contemporaries can only imagine the difficulties of uncertainty and deprivation that were a daily experience at that time for all, can only guess at the effects of that outrage of conflict on all who lived through it. I speak of that time, now, only to outline the dreadful times through which both of my parents, their siblings and our grandparents lived, operated and survived. These were times and conditions of living, from which my generation and my children’s and grandchildren’s have, so far, been mercifully spared. Other nations and countries in the world still suffer the consequences of political manipulation and greed from which such conflicts spring.

It was towards the end of these awful times that our mother met and fell in love with Edgar, the man who would become her lifelong partner, marry her and stay with her for 58 years until his death in 2003. It was to be an enduring love match that Ruth found so difficult to bear the loss of when Edgar, our father, passed away almost 7 years ago. It was a loss that our mother could hardly bear and which she never got over.

On the afternoon of Wednesday the 11th of august, the day before my mother passed away, my sister, Rosemarie and I went back to the home of our Aunt, Joyce Hill, following her visit with Mum in the hospital that morning, and spent a couple of hours or more in her company. In that time my dearly cherished aunt told me many stories of my parents, some of which were quite distressing for her to recall. As we talked I said to Joyce that my parents had told me so much about their lives together and the things which they had done, experienced and achieved but that, even in the short autobiographies that they had written, they only ever described things in a factual way and I’d often wanted to know how they felt about taking on the challenges and adventures on which they’d embarked together. Our mother was always warm and emotional with us, her children, but the experiences of her early life when emotional control was needed, as was the case with most of her contemporaries, left her incapable of describing the emotional highs and lows of her earlier life before her children were born. That afternoon, our aunt Joyce, opened up a wonderful picture for me of two young people in their early twenties, not long married and setting out on the adventure of their lives. My mother’s father, Oscar Dorland, had, it transpired, wanted to go to the mission field in Africa himself but was unable to do so because he and his wife were committed to looking after Aunt Vi who needed long term care and was unable to look after herself. When Edgar, whose ambition had always been to become a missionary, and Ruth set out to sail to Africa as missionaries my grandfather was so proud of his daughter. Aunt Joyce, who was 12 years old when she first met Ruth and became a lifelong friend as she grew older, went to stay with our parents in Maidstone just before they embarked on the adventure of their lives and she told me how excited they were and full of joy and anticipation. Joyce gave me a great gift of insight into my parents’ lives that afternoon as I saw them full of the youthful enthusiasm that I also felt at that age. I can now look back at the photographs of them, of which there are many, and see the joy and excitement that they experienced. I can share in that wonderful time of their lives with warmth. On that day my wonderful aunt gave me a gift beyond measure for which I will forever be grateful. It seems that, however old you get to be, there is always something more that you can learn and understand about your parents.

My sister, Heather, and I were both born in West Africa. A year after my birth my parents flew back to England on a converted Lancaster bomber for a year’s furlough, as it was called, a necessary interlude every three years as we Caucasians do not cope well with the prevalent malaria and yellow fever to which we are exposed in those tropical climes and need time away from it. My mother told me that on that flight the stewardess looked at me and said;”well young man! You are doing at one year old what most people never do in a lifetime!” How times have changed! A few years later, after my sister Rosemarie had been born in Belfast, my mother flew back out to Nigeria to join my father who had returned to the mission field on his own as she had to stay a while with her parents to give birth to Rosemarie and get her started in life. We flew out on a B.O.A.C. Britannia aircraft, the “whispering giant”, as it was called; a four engine turbo prop and the pride of its’ day. The flight took 24 hours with a stopover for refuelling in Tripoli. The very same stewardess was on the flight and remembered us well. My poor mother was struggling with myself aged four, a two year old Heather and Rosemarie a babe in arms. At Tripoli the plane crew took me off to the airport bar to give mum a break and I remember to this day carrying the glass of orange juice which they bought me across the lounge to their table, struggling with fierce determination not to spill it.

This was to be my parents’ last tour of mission duty and is, of course, the one I remember best. We lived in a bungalow in Calabar and it was here that our mother began our more formal education with the assistance of the P.N.E.U correspondence teaching course. What fortunate children Heather and I were! Every lesson was playtime. Not for us the boredom of stuffy classrooms and intimidating strict teachers, clockwatching our day away. Here our patient and loving mother made everything fun and gave us the lifelong joy of reading and literature. At her feet we learned about history, arithmetic and much more. Creativity in painting and drawing was lovingly instilled into us and in the dirt courtyard in front of our house mum built a large sandpit in which we created a relief map of the world, and, in doing this she gave us the world in the love of knowledge that has stayed with us all of our lives and prepared us for the more formal schooling in Aberdeen where we arrived straight from tropical Africa to experience the most extreme winter for 50 years in 1957. Whether that extreme cold had anything to do with it I don’t know, but very shortly afterwards I acquired a young brother, Victor, and our family was complete!

From Aberdeen we moved to Glasgow, from Glasgow to Belfast, from Belfast to.....well, by then I’d turned into a stroppy teenager and left home as the rest of the family moved to Larne, Plymouth, Luton, Folkestone, Grantham and, finally, Watford, my parents shedding children gradually as they moved on.
What can I tell you all to describe the wonderful woman that my mother was? Our guest room as we grew up was constantly occupied by visiting aunts, uncles, grandparents and others. We children used to revel in the visits of our aunts. Daphne, Myrna , Joyce and Clarence came regularly on holiday to enrich our young lives. Our uncle Roy and his wonderfully mischievous wife, aunt May, who always won brownie points in my eyes by teasing my very serious father. Mum welcomed and loved all of them. But there were always others who were experiencing difficulties of one kind or another. People who were in trouble needing a refuge from difficult spouses or parents. People who were ill and in need of care. Some stayed with us for a night or two, some for a few weeks and some for years. Our mother just loved people. Her heart went out to all and she offered generosity of spirit and care to all who came her way and needed kindness, help or support, a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. Mum was always there, even if it caused difficulty and inconvenience to herself. And through her example we learned the most important lessons of life, that people are what it is all about. Life is about care and compassion for others. It is not at all surprising that my sisters Heather and Rosemarie became nurses, my brother, Victor, became a pastor, I became a social worker. Our mother showed all of us the importance of caring for others and did so herself, all her life. She was unassuming and so generous in spirit and deed; never more happy and contented than when surrounded by family and friends. Ruth Mary Hulbert lived a wonderful and rich life involved in adventures and community care throughout. She lived a fulfilled life. She and her sisters came into a world where a mind and an education were considered to be the priority for young men and young women prepared themselves for marriage, motherhood and homemaking. Mum did all these things but also so much more. In later life she trained and qualified as a nurse and was an outstanding student in her class. She had a fine mind and had she been born 20 years later would probably have graduated from university with honours. In her time she lived a life at the side of her husband having graduated from Newbold college as a bible worker and took on challenges that most women of her generation would not have contemplated. She lived to see her four children grow up equipped with the fine values that she gave them, to enjoy her nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren and loved every one of them. She loved being useful and needed.

In her latter years she used to say to all of us, her children; “Oh, how I loved it when my children were little. They needed me so much!” I used to say to her, “Mum, we still do and we always will.” We do still need her, we need the memory of her and the legacy she has left us of care for others and kindness, always finding the best in people, integrity, truth and love. We shall all miss her dreadfully but we’re all grateful for the example she gave us and the knowledge she imparted to us and the joy she gave us and we’re all immensely proud that our mother was Ruth Mary Hulbert who trod lightly on this earth but touched and was touched by so many lives and has left this world that little bit better for her having been here.

Out in the mission fields of Africa which she so loved, when respected and valued members of the community pass away, there is singing, dancing and a great ululation of sound to celebrate their lives. Right now, I feel like shouting out our pride in my mother, singing loudly in her honour in celebration of her life but, I know, she wouldn’t have liked that. Mum preferred to sit quietly amongst friends and family. She didn’t like to be the centre of attention, just to be part of things and enjoy the company. It was always my mission to get her laughing because, when she did, she lit up the whole room because she couldn’t stop, and the tears would run down her cheeks as she laughed and laughed and everyone just had to laugh with her. That is my strongest memory of her, the love and the laughter that will stay with me through the coming years as I celebrate the life of my mother.

On the 12th of August 2010, at 19 50, our beloved mother passed away surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She left us peacefully in the sure and certain knowledge that she was, in the twinkling of an eye, going to be reunited with her Edgar who would be young and handsome again, and with her own mother and father who she truly loved. She was ready to say goodbye and knew her work here was done and done well and I want to thank everyone here for being here to celebrate her life with us, for being her friend and her support and demonstrating your love for this lovely, gentle woman who saw so much and achieved so much and touched and was touched by so many lives and left this world a better place for her having been here. Our mother, Ruth. Thankyou all so much.

A poem for mum written by her oldest daughter, Heather Parr:

When a mother is also a friend,
It's a special love that can never end.
When needed she was always there
With a smile, a hug, a word of care.
Though now she feels so far away,
She's still with us somehow, someway.
For part of us goes with her too,
Where Heaven's Peace is filtering through;
While in the language of the soul,
Love sings to us & makes us whole.
Held safely in God's memory
She's waiting for eternity.
And when we meet again someday,
We'll feel she's never gone away.
We don't know how all this can be.
But we believe one day we'll see
The Heaven we've been taught is there
With God, & all who love & care.

Goodbye dear Mum, you'll always be
Alive & loved in memory.