Glenna Ruth Murphy

Mom always wanted her family around her. She loved her house and fixing good meals for the family.

Holidays were her time to decorate the house and decorate the trees and bushes outside and the hanging tumbleweed inside.   She liked to make her own candy and Christmas wreaths from corn flakes and marshmallows with green food coloring and red cinnamon candies.

She loved her Grandchildren. She liked to teach the girls how to cook. I remember her talking about Anjie learning to make some dish and how proud Anjie was of herself for learning how.

Mom and Dad had 4 of their Grandchildren for several years. Anjie and Steven and then later Brian and Shannon. She loved them in the home and it was very hard for Mom and Dad to adjust to the "empty nest" once again. Those 4 children brought alot of joy to their lives and I know Mom and Dad taught them many things by their example as well as words.

Mom and Dad enjoyed camping. They bought the original Apache camper. Literally, a box with canvas and a box with pigeon holes for a kitchen. Mom painted "A-Patchie" on it. I was 15 when they started camping at House and Trout Lakes near Meredith MI. To this day I long to go camping again and I'm 62!

Mom made you pack your own "box" of clothes for the camper. If you didn't pack it, you didn't have it. She was teaching responsibility the hard way.

She loved to walk downtown and talk with the people, they all knew her as "Ruthie". She had grown up there and so they had alot in common. It was great growing up in a small town. The merchants all knew you and were friendly.

 Mom loved having her Mother with us and took good care of Gram.  She always remembered how hard Gram had it raising she and Uncle Don alone in the red barn behind Great-Grandma and Grandpa Aymers house.

As a kid, I enjoyed taking a pillowcase and go Trick or Treating all over town. Dad would check out our "goods" and take the ones he liked. Okay with me, there was enough to share and some.

The people of Fairgrove loved Mom and Dad and many came to the sale and wanted to buy something to remember them .

Mom was a telephone operator before she was married. And a Brownie leader after. As a Brownie leader, she could make things from almost nothing. She was a saver of everything, she had grown up thru the depression.

She always was there when we came home from school and had chores for us to do too.  Hanging clothes out on the line or bringing them in the wicker baskets to be sprinkled and then ironed.

Mom made my sisters, Beryl and Kathie and I "wedding veils" out of her old curtains. She used what she had to make things for us.

When my daughter, Laurie, was about 4, I made she and her friend, Amber, "wedding veils", not from curtains, but from remnant materials. Little girls like to play bride.

Mom had a treadle Singer sewing machine and was good at mending. She even mended socks with a smooth piece of wood on a stick to hold the sock open so she could mend it. I too mend socks and other clothing.

Mom loved her garden, especially her roses. She loved to take care of the yard and enjoyed the hen and chicks around the trees and Rose of Sharon on either side of the picture windows on the side of the house.

She especially enjoyed raking the lawn in the Fall. She would burn the leaves in the gravel driveway or take them to the burn barrel. We kids would rake the leaves into huge piles and jump in them or make "houses" with rooms made with leaves separating the rooms.

She canned tomatoes and many other things. Her garden was alot of work, but she enjoyed being able to pick a fresh batch of beans and cook them for supper.

I remember when we had the old porch with the screened back door and we sat around a table and took the kernels off the cob of corn and put them into bags and then into white boxes for the freezer. The huge fall flies would be all over that screen. How I hated flies in the fall.

Mom loved to use her electric fry pan and make country style hamburgers. She would make homemade soups in her pressure cooker and send us over to Mrs. Spohn or Grandma Kirby with the food. That is where I learned to listen to older folks and be kind.

I'm sure that is where I was graced with empathy for the senior population. There were alot of older folks in Fairgrove as I grew up and they were always good to me and friendly. But it was Mom who sent us to them to befreind them and learn from them.

Mom also had an eye to take notice of those that were looked down on in our town. She had Hank Gehrls come for his birthday beer. He enjoyed the attention. He worked across the street from us in the Fairgrove Enterprise placing type for the local newspaper. He was really good at setting type. He was tall and lanky and had long thin fingers and could place the type accurately. He was very proud that he never made any errors in the paper. The Enterprise came out once a week.

Mom worked hard to stretch $100 a week for a growing family. It wasn't easy to keep shoes on us and food on the table, gas in the car and the bills paid.

I am so grateful for Gram. She made the difference alot of times for Holidays and made occasions like birthdays special. She would tell Mom to go buy a roast or buy a ham and what else to get for the coming events and that helped us all enjoy life better.

Mom was always grateful to her Mother for keeping her safe and blessing her as best she could. Gram worked at Caro State Hospital 26 years and had many stories to tell when she would come home from work at 11:20 pm.

Mom and Dad made us a playhouse on Maple Street and they moved it twice. It was heavy. It is still behind our house at 2106 Main St. Fairgrove. Bunk beds and a sink made of a 9 x 9 cake pan.

The playhouse was located closest to the horse chesnut tree in the back yard on Main St.

We kids and some of the grandkids remember climbing up the tree to the roof of the playhouse and jumping down to the sandbox next to the playhouse.

The hardest thing my Mother had to do was leave her home. She always talked of returning and that was physically impossible for her.

If she were here today, she would be praying for all the family, for their safety and blessing but most of all that they come to know her Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. She wants to see all her family when they leave this earth, in heaven.

She would tell how easy it is to receive Jesus into your life. Jesus said, Come unto me all you who carry a heavy load and I will give you rest. He also said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the Father but by Me. Jesus gives us peace of heart and mind, it passes all understanding. Romans 10:9-10

Vs. 8 But what does it say? The Word (Bible) (God's message in Christ) is near you, on your lips and in your heart; that is, the Word-the message, the basis and object of faith, which we preach. vs. 9 Because if you acknowledge and confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and in your heart believe (adhere to, trust in and rely on the truth) that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. vs. 10 For with the heart a person believes (adheres to, trusts in and relies on Jesus Christ) and so is declared righteous, acceptable to God and with the mouth he confesses-declares openly and speaks out freely his faith-and confirms his salvation.

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=1930usfedcen&indiv=tr...

1930 United States Federal Census

about Ruth G Butterfield

Name: Ruth G Butterfield

Home in 1930: Akron, Tuscola, Michigan

Age: 4

Estimated Birth Year: abt 1925

Relation to Head of House: Daughter

Father's Name: Glenn F

Mother's Name: Beryl L

Occupation:

Education:

Military service:

Rent/home value:

Age at first marriage:

Parents' birthplace: View Image

Neighbors: View others on page

Household Members: Name Age

Glenn F Butterfield 29

Beryl L Butterfield 26

Ruth G Butterfield 4 6/12

Donald E Butterfield 2 4/12

Murphy, Glenna (Ruth),

15 Jun 03, 2009

Fairgrove, Michigan

Passed away Tuesday, November 24, 1992, at St. Luke's Hospital. Age 67 years. Glenna Ruth Butterfield was

born Sept. 3, 1925, in Fairgrove. She married Lawrence S. Murphy on Dec. 11, 1943, in Flint, Mich. He

predeceased her Jan. 18, 1987. She was a member of First Assembly of God, Saginaw and was an avid supporter

of Teen Challenge of Saginaw. Surviving are one son, Lawrence W. Murphy, Kawkawlin, four daughters, Mrs.

Margaret R. Mundt, Midland; Mrs. John (Beryl) Welch, Memphis, N.Y.; Mrs. Dave (Kathie) Humpert, Saginaw;

Mrs. Dave (Micky) Terry, Caro, Mich.; 13 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; one brother, Donald

Butterfield, Harrison, Mich. One grandson, Steven Hintz, predeceased her, in 1986.

Funeral service will take place 2:00 p.m. Friday, Nov. 27, at the Clark Funeral Home, Fairgrove. Rev. Fred

Smolchuck Jr. will officiate with interment in Brookside Cemetery, Fairgrove. Friends may call at the funeral

home Thursday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Memorials may be made to the Teen Challenge or the charity of your

choice.

More About Lawrence Murphy and Glenna Butterfield:

Marriage: Dec 11, 1943, Flint, Genesee Co., Michigan