Blind Childrens Center

4120 Marathon Street, Los Angeles, California 90029 (323)664-2153

A family-centered agency serving children with visual impairments

Palos Verdes Peninsula News
Summer 2002

Ruth has distanced herself from disability

By Josh Cohen
News Staff Writer

“Heros are not known by the loftiness of their carriage”
— French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau

Not all heroes climb through burning buildings or put their lives on the line to save others. Not that Rolling Hills resident Ann Ruth wouldn’t do those things if she could. It’s just that her heroism is a bit more down to earth, resting firmly on four motorized wheels.

Annie, as her friends call her, has a special gift. She inspires those who meet her to take measure of their own worth. In seeing her smile and to consider her condition, we no longer find our problems insurmountable. In Ann we find inspiration.

It’s Ann’s courage and drive, her evidence joy for life and willingness to give anything at least one try, that offer us hope in a world that is often difficult to understand. And what is the role of the hero, if not to give us hope for a brighter future?

Take former Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Steve Garvey. Stuck in one of the worst slumps of his career, Garvey met Ann at a baseball game and promised her a home run. Garvey would end the day with five hits in five at-bats, one of the best games of his career. From that day forward, he would acknowledge Ann as his good-luck charm. Garvey was quoted in Playboy magazine as saying, “The best day of my life was meeting Ann Ruth.” The two remain fast friends.

Just as friendly are the kids who come to the Blind Childrens Center, where Ann serves on the board of directors. The children mill about Annie, say center volunteers, anxious to take a ride with her on her wheelchair, to touch its gadgets and knobs and find out more about this smiling lady.

Her cheerful attitude, says the center’s Executive Director Midge Horton, is contagious to children and parents alike. "She has a wonderful attitude, and it is an inspiration to our parents to see somebody so successful and so eager to participate."

There is no question Ann Ruth is a success story. She’s an award-winning painter, author and president of her own greeting card and stationary company. She is an avid sports fan, public speaker and namesake of Annie’s Pantry, a former Torrance eatery. She enjoys skydiving, eating in Paris, sending e-mails across the globe, shopping and biking. She recently participated in the Acura Bike Tour, a Los Angeles Marathon offshoot benefiting the Blind Childrens Center, on a custom made cycle. Ann is involved in more activities and functions than most can imagine. Her accomplishments have been the subject of television pieces and magazine articles across the country. She’s carried the Olympic torch and been to the Great Wall.

“I like to do a lot of different things,” she says, adding with a smile, “I like staying on my toes.”

As if Ann accomplishments weren’t enough, she’s done it all as a quadriplegic.

At age 5, Annie was in a gymnastics accident that pinched her spinal chord and left her paralyzed from the neck down.

Friends and Family

Rebecca Moneymaker pulls the customized van into the circular driveway. She’s the first one out every time.

Rebecca slides the door back as far as it will go in order to remove a large bicycle with a seat built above the front tire. It’s the bike Ann used to compete in the Acura Bike Tour. Rebecca keeps one eye on her passenger even as she struggles to remove the bike.

Ann’s mother, Marion, rushes out to greet the pair, hugging her daughter through the van window. Ann lifts her face to allow her mother to wipe a fleck of dust from her check. The family’s great dane, the size of a small pony, moves alongside them, panting in the heat.

After the bike, come the packages. Lots of packages. Then Rebecca moves around to the other side of the van where Ann waits and opens the door. The wheelchair doesn’t want to straighten out, and one must resist the urge to help, remembering that Ann and Rebecca have done this a thousand times. To the casual observer, the process is painstaking; it’s only getting out of a car.

You come to realize that even if everyday tasks are a little more complicated for Ann and her friends, it’s just part of a daily routine. And if Ann would have it any other way, she’s doing a wonderful job hiding it.

“Of course some things would be easier if I wasn’t in a wheelchair, but I don’t think that I can’t do something because of my handicap,” Ann says. “I don’t know if I made a decision not to let my handicap be [a burden.] It sort of progressed. I figured it’s because I had good family and friends supporting me from the beginning, and I’m too busy to think about that.

“People all the time say I can’t do things,” she adds. “I just say, ‘Give me a chance, let me figure it out.’”

Ann is lucky to have Rebecca. The two young ladies, one responding to a help-wanted advertisement in the newspaper, have become friends.

“We have fun together,” says Rebecca. “We do everything: shopping, eating, seeing movies. There’s always something for me to do because Ann keeps her calendar full. Annie is an inspiration. She’s motivational. That she can do all the things she does in the condition she is in, it’s amazing. She makes me think that maybe I can be doing more.”

One of her fastest friends is her sturdy old wheelchair. Annie has foregone the new models for her trusty motorized steed. She’s been through a lot with the chair, even as far back as high school when the road gave way along a Peninsula canyon, sending Annie plunging helplessly downward.

As she lay there bleeding, one would think Ann would be overcome with panic. But that’s not her style.

“I started crying, and looked up and figured that no one could hear me,” she remembers. “I saw blood all over my body...I figured I would just hang out here for a while, then I heard the siren and thought, ‘Oh, cool.’”

Kyle Peterson was driving by and noticed Ann’s disappearance. He quickly called 911 and Ann was saved. It turned out to be one of many acts of kindness friends have exhibited toward her.

It was another friend, Roy Jones, who was determined to help Ann learn to breathe on her own. Ann does not have the muscle control in her diaphragm to breathe involuntarily. Every few seconds, she contracts her neck muscle to gulp in air and push it down into her lungs. The act has become second nature to her; without it, she would be forced to use a respirator through a tracheotomy.

“We’ve met, and talked about breathing on his own,” she says of Roy. “He and his wife are very nice people. He’s at a different stage that I am...his accident was much later in life. He’s still learning.”

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