Ruth Howard (1917–1985)

Planetarian, Weaver, Educator, and Historian

For nearly three decades, Ruth Howard took Kalamazooans on weekly “trips to the stars” and taught them how to weave stunning fabrics from natural materials. Born and raised amid a family of educators, Ruth was a strong advocate for women in the workplace. She conducted summer craft classes for children and supervised the museum’s suitcase-size cultural collections. As a charter member of the Kalamazoo Weavers Guild, she taught a popular series of public classes in handweaving. She also created and led groundbreaking programs at the dawn of the space age in the museum’s planetarium.

Ruth Marguerite Howard was born in October 1917 on the Howard family farm, two miles southwest of Ionia in rural central Michigan. The home where Ruth was born stood on the same property where her great-grandparents built their first log cabin some 75 years earlier.

As a child, Ruth enjoyed cooking and helping in the kitchen. With her mother’s careful guidance, she became an expert at preparing, canning, and preserving food. She especially enjoyed learning about the recipes of her ancestors. But perhaps most of all, Ruth marveled at the world around her — the songbirds, the wildflowers, the rocks, and the nighttime sky. She became an avid birdwatcher, photographer, archaeologist, astronomer, and historian.

From kindergarten through 8th grade, Ruth attended a two-room rural school south of Ionia, a brisk two-mile hike from home each way, rain or shine. She graduated from Ionia High School in 1935 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Grinnell College in Iowa in 1940. Ruth then worked as a rural schoolteacher in Ionia County for a time.

In 1945, Ruth entered the University of Michigan, where she was made a teaching fellow while earning her master’s degree in anthropology. She participated in a 10-week archaeological expedition sponsored by the University of Chicago and completed three semesters of independent research in archaeology related to the Fort Wayne mound site in Detroit. She also received an annual short story award from the state Federation of Women’s Clubs. After graduating in 1948, Ruth returned to Ionia, where she became the curator of historical rooms at the Hall-Fowler Memorial Library. Her focus there was on county history, while serving as a tour guide and lecturer.

In June 1949, Ruth moved to Kalamazoo, where she began a 28-year career as curator of education at the Kalamazoo Public Museum, which was then part of the Kalamazoo Public Library and Kalamazoo Public Schools system.

Cosmopolitan Club

In 1919, a group of business professionals organized the Business and Professional Women’s Club (BPW) in Kalamazoo, a “cooperation among the business women of the city for social educational and civic purposes” (Gazette). Members enjoyed networking opportunities and discussed current social concerns. In April 1930, the Junior Club of Business and Professional Women was organized under the direction of the Kalamazoo BPW. This club operated until October 1939 when it became known as the Cosmopolitan Club.

Soon after joining the museum staff, Ruth prepared a lecture about the history of European costumes for members of Kalamazoo’s Cosmopolitan Club. She traced the origins and development of traditional costumes worn in European countries from the Middle Ages until present times and illustrated her talk with dolls from the museum’s collection. Club members enjoyed her presentation, but Ruth was equally impressed by the club itself and its mission. The organization seemed to fit Ruth’s aspirations as an advocate for women in business, so in December 1949, she joined. After a few months, Ruth was elected vice president, and in 1951, she became club president and later served as the organization’s historian.

“Ruth Howard, who presented a discussion of the history of the National Federation of BPW, pointed out that the purpose of the organization is to elevate the status of women in business and the professions, to promote their interests and to bring about a spirit of co-operation and better understanding.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 25 January 1951

Ruth applied her interest in other cultures to a revolutionary museum program called “Cultural Caches.” Expanding on the museum’s collection of dolls dressed in traditional costumes, Ruth spearheaded a program that featured lunchbox- and suitcase-style collections of cultural and historical significance that, just like library books, could be checked out at the museum, then located on the second floor of the library building, for individual study. She said the program was rare among museums in the United States.

Pioneer Room

Ruth was passionate about many things, especially U.S. history and the pioneer spirit of her ancestors. During the first few years of her tenure, Ruth focused her attention on the museum’s Pioneer Room exhibit, originally created in 1928 in the third-floor attic portion of the “Library House” (the former home of Horace and Helen Peck that later housed the museum). It featured wood from one of the first houses erected in Schoolcraft and fireplace equipment from the first schoolhouse in St. Joseph County’s Brady district. Years later, Ruth was instrumental in the development of an updated Pioneer Room exhibit when it was reestablished in the new library building, using parts of the historic Shafter cabin from Galesburg. Ruth contributed antique candle molds and other items to the exhibit from her family’s home near Ionia.

Handweaving

While working with the Pioneer Room, Ruth discovered a small two-harness loom, but she wasn’t sure how to use it. Intrigued, Ruth took a few lessons from a woman in South Haven and soon developed a passion for handmade fabric. She attended a two-week seminar in New York, where she learned about the preparation of wool and flax for weaving. In 1951, Ruth presented a public program in the Pioneer Room, including demonstrations of early weaving equipment. She showed the complete process, from extracting fibers from flax, spinning the flax fibers into linen thread on a spinning wheel, and finally weaving the thread into cloth on an 1841 loom that was made in Schoolcraft.

“…weaving really took off in Kalamazoo because of the late Ruth Howard, who offered a weaving class at the public library. It was cheap and entertaining, and Howard was a master teacher who easily imbued her students with a love of the craft.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 15 November 1998

Along with demonstrating weaving techniques for classroom tours, Ruth began teaching children’s weaving classes at the museum. Soon after, she was asked to teach in the Kalamazoo Public Schools Adult Education program. Eventually, Ruth instituted a highly popular series of 20-week adult weaving courses at the museum.

As her interest in weaving developed, Ruth became affiliated with a group of like-minded individuals from Southwest Michigan who had formed the Kalamazoo Valley Weavers Guild. Inspired by the guild, Ruth and others founded the Kalamazoo Weavers Guild in 1968 (now the Weavers Guild of Kalamazoo, Inc.). It’s no surprise that most of the charter members were Ruth’s former students. By the mid-1970s the Kalamazoo Weavers Guild had grown to nearly 150 members.

“With all of the emphasis on space and its importance in our future, it follows that an understanding and interest in what lies out in space is essential for progress in that direction. This is the sort of thing that generates that interest, particularly among the young people who will be living in the space age.”

—Hans Baldauf, Kalamazoo Gazette, 11 February 1958

“Theater of the Skies”

In 1930, the $1 million Adler Planetarium opened in Chicago, the first of its kind in America. The planetarium’s mission was (and still is) to inspire exploration and understanding of the universe.

Some 25 years later, the first public planetarium in Michigan opened at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills. Inspired by the opening of Cranbrook’s planetarium and in response to growing public interest in such a project, the Kalamazoo Board of Education updated its plans for the then upcoming combined Kalamazoo Public Library and Museum building to include a space on the second floor for a new planetarium. The planetarium was made possible through a fundraising effort by the Kalamazoo Amateur Astronomical Association and a $20,000 grant from the Kalamazoo Foundation.

Ruth assisted with the planetarium’s installation and soon began giving free lectures for children and adults in Kalamazoo’s new $35,000 “theater of the skies,” named after local scientist Hans Baldauf. Ruth conducted workshops where students could study astronomy, and she even taught them how to make their own miniature planetariums. Ruth would direct the programs at the museum’s planetarium for some 18 years.

Ruth retired from the Kalamazoo Public Museum in 1977 and returned to her childhood home at “Spring Valley Farm” in Ionia, where she built a state-of-the-art studio workroom and continued teaching public weaving courses. Ruth passed away in June 1985 at the age of 67.

Legacy

Ruth’s legacy lives on through those who remember her informative and entertaining programs in the planetarium at the Kalamazoo Public Museum (now the Kalamazoo Valley Museum). And in a way she’s still teaching the craft of handweaving in Kalamazoo. To this day, the Weavers Guild of Kalamazoo, Inc. gratefully acknowledges her leadership and vision, while her beloved floor loom still serves artists and learners in the Kirk Newman Art School at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

Written by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, September 2025