Ruth Millett Works From Home

This promotional photo shows Ruth Millett's typewriter out on the living room table.  But her twins, Pete and Lynne, say their mother actually wrote in her bedroom.  When the weekly deadline for Millett's six weekly installments of her column loomed, the twins remember their mom disappearing into her room and shutting the door.  

For a couple of hours, no sounds emerged from the room where Ruth Millett shut herself up to think and do her work.  And then--suddenly--her twins would hear a burst of typing. 

Thirty minutes or so after the rapid fire typing began, Ruth Millett would emerge, a neat stack of columns in hand, with corrections made in pencil.  She would slip them in an envelope and drop them in the mail to her editor.  Then Millett would turn her full attention back to the job of running her house and raising her twins, until the next deadline reared its head.... 

A Dual Life

"Miss Ruth Millett," the famed newspaper columnist, found credibility with her millions of readers during WWII by being a "war wife and mother of twins."  In her columns, she shared advice and sympathy with other women dealing with the challenges of life with their husbands at war overseas.  At the same time, she gave a cheeky, fresh voice to women's complaints and celebrated with them about the opportunities the war created for the "weaker sex."  

But in her hometown of Austin, Texas, "Miss Ruth Millett" went by "Mrs. Frederick Lowry." And she fought for years to keep her column, WE, THE WOMEN, out of the Austin newspaper. In this way, she managed to live a dual life as both a prominent and powerful national figure, and a "regular" doctor's wife and homemaker.

When They Want Someone To Turn To....

The NEA released the above promotional materials for the column, We, The Women, during WWII, while "Ruth Millett" was a war wife herself, raising her two young twins while her husband, Dr. Frederick Lowry, was overseas.  

We can see here why our grandmother's readers adored her.  Sassy and outspoken, she dared to say the things many women only thought.  With her 1940s brand of feminism, she asserted that if husbands were going return from WWII demanding that their wives "act like women," then the husbands sure as heck better step up and "act like men" themselves.  

Below is a transcription of the column featured in the promotional materials above.

-WE, THE  WOMEN-

 

G.I. Bill of Rights Gives War Wives an Idea for Own

By Ruth Millett

 

A group of soldiers in Europe got together and drew up their own G.I. bill of rights—which they figured would make married life entirely different from the army where “we can’t go to town without a pass, can’t refuse to work, can’t quit our job, have to stand in line for chow,” etc.

            Their bill of rights –printed in “Yank”—listed such things as “no standing in line for anything.  To invite the boys over at least once a week, if so desired.  Nothing to do with the kitchen.  To wear the pants in the family.”

            If the war wife made out her own bill of rights, it would probably go something like this:

1.      Never to put the car in the garage at night.

2.    To have her cigarets lighted for her occasionally.

3.     To go out to dinner (where there is dancing) at least once a week.

4.      Never to have anything to do with the car—except to drive it.

5.     To give her husband full responsibility for keeping the lawn mowed, putting on storm windows, dealing with the plumber, electrician, and Collector of Internal Revenue.

6.     Never to set a mouse trap.

7.    Never to mix drinks for guests.

8.     Never to lock up the house at night, or get up when a storm breaks to close windows.

9.     Never to make her own train reservations.

10.Never to shove around any piece of furniture heavier than a footstool.

11. Never to go to a “mixed” party alone.

12. Never, never to wear the pants in the family.

 

 

This woman feeding her twins is our grandmother, Ruth Millett Lowry, who we knew as Grandmommy. The little boy is our father, Pete, and the girl is our Aunt Lynne. But this isn’t a photo taken from a family album. Grandmommy was a nationally beloved, syndicated newspaper columnist, and the photo is part of a promotional flyer for her column "We The Women."

 

For more than 30 years, Grandmommy wrote syndicated columns that ran in newspapers across the country. For most of her career, she penned six women’s interest columns and six manners columns per week, which appeared under the name Ruth Millett.  By the time she retired, the columns ran in 450 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.