Ruby D. Rittenhouse, 96, of Lewellen passed away Monday morning, September 9, 2024 at Indian Hills Manor in Ogallala.
Funeral Services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, September 14, 2024, at the Lewellen Wesleyan Church with Pastor Cliff Transmeier officiating. Burial will follow in the Ash Creek Cemetery north of Lewellen.
Visitation will be held one hour prior to services at the church.
Memorials in Ruby’s name can be made to the Lewellen Giving Bee.
Holechek-Bondegard Funeral Home and Cremations in Oshkosh is serving the Rittenhouse family.
Family and friends can leave condolences at www.bondegardfunerals.com.
Ruby Deane (Younger) Rittenhouse was born on September 23, 1927, in Elbert County, Colorado to Bruce E. and Cora D. Younger. She began life in a log home in the pine forest east of Monument, Colorado. When she was five, she became big sister to a set of twins, Norman and Norma. When she started school, her mother would walk her through the forest to a one-room school. Later she would attend elementary school in Monument and graduate from Palmer-Lewis High School, also in Monument.
After graduating high school, she worked in an office at Fort Carson where she met Army Tech Sgt. Dallas Rittenhouse. They were married in Colorado Springs on April 21, 1946, and moved to a farm/ranch near Lewellen, Nebraska where they spent their married life and raised a family. To this union four children were born: Dianne, Dennis, James and Judy.
As a farm wife, Ruby was instrumental in providing for the family by helping on the ranch, raising chickens to butcher and a large garden, canning and freezing produce. Eventually she conscripted four extra sets of hands to help in those processes. Who can forget plucking stinky wet feathers from countless chickens or spending hot summer days on hands and knees pulling weeds from garden rows or picking potato bugs from a hundred potato plants. She was a wonderful cook and made so many tasty meals from her home-grown products. Ruby was also an excellent seamstress, sewing draperies for her home and clothing for herself and her daughters including prom and wedding dresses.
In addition to working for a number of years at the Lewellen Grocery, Ruby was an active member of her community. She became a leader for a local 4-H club for many years, instructing 4-Hers learning to sew, cook, bake, and create proper table setting. She even mentored boys through a couple levels of entomology, the collection, study and identification of insects. When she was widowed, she joined a student mentoring program in the schools. Some of her mentees kept in touch with her for years. She joined the Giving Bee Quilting Group, making hundreds of quilts for children in foster care programs. In 2014 the group was recognized as the Outstanding Volunteer Group of the year by the First Lady of Nebraska, Sally Ganem.
Ruby is survived by children, Dianne (Rich) Kleist, Dennis (Sherrill, dec.) Rittenhouse, Jim Rittenhouse and Kae Carlson and Judy (Barney) Steger; Grandchildren, Lindsay (Travis) Anderson, Dennis (Bryan) Bond, Jennifer (Andrew) Moskowitz, Lisa Rittenhouse, Colton (Angela) Yauk, and Victor Yauk. Great grandchildren include Blake and Sutton Anderson, Madison, Gabriel and Joshua Moskowitz, Wyatt, Carter and Nevaeh Yauk, Adalynn Yauk, and Felicity and Cecily Rittenhouse; Sister, Norma Lavelett and many nieces and nephews.
Ruby was preceded in death by husband Dallas, parents Bruce and Cora Younger, daughter-in-law Sherrill Rittenhouse, brother Norman Younger, brother-in-law Ralph Lavelett and all of Dallas’s siblings and spouses.
Her children fondly remember her reading books to them in the evenings and the family sitting around the kitchen table playing rather intense games of Monopoly. One perhaps little-known fact is that Ruby was an absolute card shark at Pitch and Pinochle games and a master of Cribbage right up to the week she died. They will miss her very much.