
DATE: Tuesday, June 17, 1997                TAG: 9706170056

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson

                                            LENGTH:  137 lines

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR RUBY RUBY HOPPER OF NORFOLK IS THROWING A 50TH BIRTHDAY BASH JULY 5 TO BENEFITHOMELESS FAMILIES - AND TO MAKE UP FOR ALL THE PARTIES SHE NEVER HAD WHEN SHE WAS GROWING UP

ASK RUBY HOPPER about birthday parties and you get both laughter and tears.

First, the laughs.

``What parties? We didn't have them!'' she says, clapping her hands in amusement at the thought.

Go a little deeper, and the jovial woman with the owl-like glasses unearths childhood memories. They cause her upbeat voice to break just a little. She dabs her eyes with the back of her hand before going on. These small gestures from an otherwise cheery woman are the only signs of a long-ago hurt that Ruby plans to do something about on her birthday this year.

When Ruby was little, she wouldn't have even known it was her birthday except that she was born on the Fourth of July. At least she thinks she was. She was born at home on the kitchen floor, and the doctor forgot to record the birth, she says. But her mother always said she was born on Independence Day. So that's what she goes by.

There were always fireworks in the small town of Clinton, Iowa, where she grew up. Ruby thought they were for her.

Good thing, too, because little else made the day special.

Hopper had 11 brothers and sisters. She was No. 6. Her father worked in a factory, and his wages rarely met the needs of a dozen children. Birthdays, like Thanksgivings and Christmases, were pretty much the same as any other day.

Ruby remembers begging other children at school for food, wearing mismatched socks and her brother's old shoes, sometimes from two different pairs. She remembers how other kids made fun of her for that.

Given all that, she had no expectations for birthday frills, or even birthday wishes.

At St. Vincent's orphanage, birthdays got a little better, but not much.

That's where Ruby landed when she was 8. Her father died in 1956 of stomach cancer and Ruby and six siblings got sent to two different orphanages. An older brother went to Boys' Town in Nebraska, where he's now a social worker. Two other siblings were adopted. Ruby's older sister, Theresa, and another brother were old enough to live on their own. Theresa Green, in a telephone interview from Clinton, remembers seeing the family split apart.

``It broke my heart,'' she says.

Their mother cried, too, and turned away when the orphanage workers came to get Ruby and the other children. Ruby wondered, at the time, why her mother had abandoned them like that.

That hurt lingered a good, long time, deep down close to her heart.

In time, her younger brother and sister were adopted from St. Vincent's. She waved goodbye to them from the orphanage yard, thinking she'd never see them again.

This is where Ruby stops to force her voice steady again. Then she goes on.

She entertained no thoughts of being adopted herself, she says matter-of-factly. ``I was too old. Most of the people wanted little bitty ones.''

But at least at St. Vincent's Home, there was food. She would eat and eat and eat when she first got there, making up for all the times her whole family shared a bowl of popcorn for supper, or slices of bread with mayonnaise.

The birthday parties at the orphanage were not elaborate. The nuns would buy a cake and celebrate all the July birthdays at once.

So Ruby never had a party all her own. Never blew out candles, or passed around cake with her name emblazoned in icing.

This year, though, is going to be different.

Ruby is having a birthday party.

Six months ago she told her husband she was going to throw herself a 50th birthday bash. She would invite as many people as she could. And instead of presents for herself, she would ask people to bring something for homeless families.

Families in the same situation she remembers living in as a child.

She can't get over thinking that if her family had been offered a little support, from aunts, uncles, friends, or someone, anyone, even strangers, they might have stayed together.

It's taken her many years to get over the pain she felt about her mother leaving them. ``She had no skills, there was no welfare, I know that now. But when I was little, I could never understand why my mother didn't keep us.''

She hopes her birthday party will not only help keep other families together, but educate the public about homeless families. About the fact that they are usually just ordinary people like herself, not drug addicts or bums or freeloaders.

Anyone who walks into The Dwelling Place, the homeless shelter that will receive the gifts people bring to Ruby's party, can find that out for themselves.

I go by there a couple of times a month to play with the children in a preschool class. They are children like any other children except for this: They have no home.

And according to the director there, Trish Manthey, children make up more than half of the shelter's population in any given year.

So it isn't too tough for Ruby to imagine herself in the kid-size shoes of those children.

Her own brothers and sisters had a reunion with their mother in 1974. By that time, Ruby realized what her mother had been up against all those years ago, and felt better about what had happened. Two of Ruby's brothers are flying from Iowa to Virginia to help her celebrate her birthday.

First, Ruby was having the party in the back yard of the apartment complex where she lives with her husband, Dennis, and her two children, David, 21, and Monika, 18.

Then her husband suggested something bigger. And bigger it's become. Now she's having the party at Northside Park on July 5, and throwing it open to the public.

She wants everyone who feels compassion for a homeless child to come, and help keep a family together.

Ruby has her own family now, which makes her happy. They live simply in a small apartment near Wards Corner in Norfolk. She works as a nanny; her husband works at Goodwill Industries and a hotel.

``She embodies compassion,'' said Sandra Porter Leon, a friend of seven years. ``She always thinks of the needs of others before herself, even when it's her own birthday party.''

As simple as Ruby's life is now, she says she has everything she needs.

``The most important things in life are good health, friends, and people who love you. I don't need anything else.''

MEMO: To pass along comments or ideas for future columns, please call

INFOLINE at 640-5555, and press 4332. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]

TAMARA VONINSKI

The Virginian-Pilot

TOP: Ruby Hopper grew up poor and ended up in an orphanage at age 8.

ABOVE: Hopper helps out at The Dwelling Place, a Norfolk homeless

shelter.

WANT TO GO?

Event: Ruby's 50th Birthday Party

When: July 5, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.