GREAT GRANDMA RUTH

The Voice of Downriver
Family gathers to mark 100th birthday
By Paula Evans Neuman - Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2010



Ruth Lloyd McCartney was joined by many family members to celebrate her 100th birthday at Belle Fountain Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Riverview recently.

The eighth of Joseph and Margaret Lloyd’s nine children, she was born on June 22, 1910, in West Virginia.

Her mother died when she was 7, and her father had to move away to find work, so the five youngest children in the family moved in with their grandparents, George and Mildred Griffin, who had a farm.

“Most of her childhood memories came during this time with Grandpap and Grandma Griffin,” said Ruth’s son, Richard McCartney.

Her grandfather was a lawyer, and she remembers him as “a cantankerous sort.”

“When Grandpap would do something which didn’t sit well with Grandma, she would say, ‘Law me, that old man,’ McCartney’s son said. “That phrase stayed with Ruth her entire life.”

She also tells of stopping to visit her mother’s tombstone on a hill on the way to the one-room schoolhouse she attended.

Ruth and her older sister, Mary, moved to Ohio when they were a little older. Ruth went to “beauty school” there, and the two sisters moved to Detroit in the late 1920s.

Ruth married William McCartney, and they had a daughter, Jeannine, and two sons, Tom and Bill. The family moved to Riverview in 1945, and it was there that Richard was born.


“In addition to raising her children, Ruth spent some time working as a waitress at Corrigan’s Café and Blossom Bar in Wyandotte,” Richard said.

Ruth and her husband attended many Riverview High School sporting events when their children were in school there, and helped form the Riverview Booster Club.

Ruth and William retired to Florida and lived there through the 1970s and early 1980s. During that time, Ruth worked in a high school cafeteria.

Her husband died in 1986, and Ruth moved back to the Downriver area.

“An avid bingo player through the years, she could be found playing as many as 12 to 15 cards at a time while in her upper 90s,” her son said.

She has 16 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.

Coming from Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Ohio and across Michigan, most of them were in attendance during her 100th birthday celebration.