Ruby Bartlett didn't shy away from difficult tasks.
As a child, she took on much of the responsibility for raising her younger siblings.
She was fearless in the face of the "white plague" when, as a nurse in the 1930s and early '40s, she went to work at a Tucson boarding facility for children with tuberculosis.
When her only child became critically ill while visiting Mexico, Bartlett enlisted the life-saving help of a United States senator.
And when cancer spread through family and friends in her south-side neighborhood, she helped found a committee to demand the cleanup of chemical contaminants in the area's water supply.
"She was a very influential lady and well-respected and well-known in these circles of Tucson. She helped a lot of people," said Ignacio Gomez, who heads the Unified Community Action Board Bartlett started.
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Her work to improve the south-side community is her legacy. Bartlett died Oct. 12. She was 97.
"We miss her already," said fellow community activist Hank Oyama. "She would always be ready to help out, and contributed in the efforts to improve our community. She was active in so many things over the years.
"She and her daughter have been such strong supporters and contributors to many activities in the community."
Bartlett, whose given name was Anna Rebecca, grew up in Bisbee and Tucson. She received nurse's training through the county, which desperately needed qualified personnel to care for tuberculosis patients during the outbreak.
She worked for eight years at the Pima County Preventorium, a boarding school for children from low-income homes who were suspected of having tuberculosis or who had a family member with the disease.
The Preventorium was located on the west slope of the Tucson Mountains, 15 miles out of town, in the mid-1930s. The site was a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp. At that time, there were more than 1,000 children with tuberculosis attending public schools in Tucson.
Children spent the school year in the Tucson Mountains receiving medical care, nutritional counseling and schooling, then attend a summer camp in Oracle. The Preventorium could accommodate 130 children, ranging in age from 2 to 16, who stayed an average of nine months.
Bartlett wasn't entirely popular with the children. As camp nurse, she was responsible for serving up the cod-liver oil each day.
"The children got a tablespoon of cod-liver oil every morning after breakfast. Then they got a half orange," said Bartlett in a 1988 Arizona Daily Star article.
"There was a lot of discipline. Sometimes children would run away, but it was because of the lonesomeness. The children missed their families," she said. "But I never felt lonesome out there. It was so gratifying to comfort a child."
Bartlett wed after leaving the Preventorium, but the union, which produced her child, Ann Montaño, didn't last. A second marriage was equally unsuccessful and Bartlett focused her energy on supporting her daughter, which meant working two or three jobs at a time. After a few years in Bisbee, the mother and daughter returned to Tucson, where Bartlett worked as a bookkeeper.
Ann was a sickly adolescent and nearly died during a 1956 trip to Mexico. Doctors had given Ann, then 17, a grim prognosis for surviving a kidney ailment. In response, the teen urged her mother to take her to Mexico to seek out distant relatives. Montaño reasoned that she wanted to connect with her roots before she died.
While on the trip mother and daughter were involved in a car accident that left Montaño with internal injuries. Her kidney collapsed during surgery, and the local supply of her rare blood type was quickly exhausted. Bartlett immediately called her contacts in Tucson for help. The news spread by word of mouth and within 12 hours Sen. Barry Goldwater had arranged to have the correct type flown from a Texas blood bank to Mexico City. A month later, Goldwater sent his private plane to Mexico to bring the recovering girl back to Tucson. The family stayed in close contact with the senator for years after he came to their aid and he visited their south-side home on occasion.
Bartlett thought her daughter's savior was deserving of a grand entrance when he visited.
"My mom said we didn't have a red carpet to roll out, so she painted the front walk and patio red," said Montaño. The senator appreciated the gesture. "He laughed. He thought that was so funny."
Bartlett put her nursing background to use volunteering as a hospital translator for residents of Mexico who sought treatment in Tucson for themselves or their children. Bartlett's assistance didn't stop when she left the hospital. She regularly invited the visiting families to stay in the home she shared with her daughter for the duration of their medical treatment.
"She helped a lot of down-and-out people who needed it - helped feeding them and caring for them and being a humanitarian for them," activist Ignacio Gomez said.
When her daughter developed thyroid cancer later in life, Bartlett suspected a correlation with the water contamination. She took action against the handful of companies responsible for the pollution and helped form the Unified Community Action Board.
"She was very, very instrumental in putting that program together and making sure that the people who caused (the contamination) cleaned it up, which is being done as we speak," Gomez said. "It's the third biggest Superfund site in the country.
"She was a very positive person when it came to getting things done for the community. She was very, very involved in community problems and solutions."
Now Montaño, armed with lessons learned from her mother, is carrying on Bartlett's good works.
"She taught me one gesture of goodness can bring you wealth," Montaño said.
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