Inez Ruehl will turn 100 on March 27, 2019. (Christy Perry for The Cullman Tribune)
Inez Eidson Ruehl will be celebrating her 100th birthday on March 27. She has made a tremendous impact on Cullman through her many philanthropic efforts. She, along with her son, Herman Jr., sat done with The Tribune to talk about her life in Cullman County.
The Eidson family moved to Carroll County Georgia to Welti, where they maintained a 40-acre cotton farm. Inez attended Welti School through the ninth grade and graduated from Fairview in 1937. She recalled her school’s days, but it wasn’t always easy.
She explained, “I rode the bus to Fairview…got up early! Caught that bus, I think, at 6:30, which meant getting up at 4 in the morning. I roughed it out, though, and graduated in ‘37.”
Inez is one of 10 children.
She said, “My older brothers and sisters, I never knew them hardly because they were married when I was just a kid. Us younger ones, we had a lot of fun, too much fun. Fights, too. That went with it, though.”
Life was mostly work and school, but the kids had fun, too. They played with rubber tires clicking wheels. Thursdays were exciting for Inez as that was the day the traveling store came by. She recalled trading eggs for other products.
Going to Joe C. Sapp's Clothing Store for fabric and celebrating 4th of July at the river are just a couple of Inez’s fond memories of childhood.
She recalled one trip, saying “The whole community would go to the river back early on. One time, a woman got sick on us. She couldn’t even walk. She was SO sick. We happened to have a quilt in the bunch. We carried that woman on that quilt, it was a good 3 miles to the river we’d walked. We brought her back on that quilt to Ruth’s (Duke) house.”
Ruth and Inez are friends who grew up together in the Welti community.
In the fall of each year, schools let out for cotton picking season. After Inez finished Fairview, she stayed home that fall to help with that year’s cotton season. Afterward she attended Alverson Business School in Birmingham.
She laughed, “Boy, I was flying high then!”
She was a determined young woman and perhaps her distaste for picking cotton was a motivator.
“It was hard work. I didn’t like it. It was plain old drudgery for me,” she said as she chuckled.
She returned home after attending business school and landed a job with Colonial Poultry Farm, a company from Missouri that had opened in Cullman.
She said, “I was lucky and got a job with them, and it was hard to get a job back then. I think I made $10 a week. We had big ol’ incubators and hatched baby chicks.”
Inez worked in the office.
She continued, “It was mail order stuff, and boy, were we busy. That mail would come in and we’d have a sack full. I mean a BIG sack full of mail. It was required with the postal service- you had to get that stuff out by a certain date. We’d work on that stuff having to acknowledge those people’s money wanting checks and we’d ship them. Lord, we’d ship them by the thousands.”
She was a single working woman who was “independent as I could be.”
At this time, she was boarding with a family she remembered with great fondness. She met a young foreman at Colonial Poultry Farm named Herman Ruehl. Herman and Inez married in 1941 and soon had a young family with three children: Ruth, Herman Jr. and Martha Jane. Inez continued to work during the spring shipping season, which was only three months out of the year.
In 1958, tragedy struck the young family.
Inez recalled the painful events, “Martha turned 7 years old. When she turned 7 years old, we’d had her birthday dinner. Then two days after that, to the very hour, she and her daddy had an accident that took both of them.”
Both were killed when the car Herman was driving collided with a trailer truck. Herman was only 41 years old.
Said Inez, “Since then, I’ve been on my own.”
Inez retired around the time the Colonial office closed in either 1979 or 1980, but her contributions to the city of Cullman were just beginning. Inez would go on to co-found Christmas Love with her friend Loreen Scott. The organization helps needy families and children in the Cullman community. She is also a charter member of the Pilot Light House where she served as secretary/treasurer for many years. She also sat on its board of directors.
The land she and her husband owned was also the original location of the Weiss Cottage, Cullman’s oldest house. Inez donated the cottage to the City of Cullman in 1976. She only asked that Weiss Cottage be relocated. It was moved to its current location on First Avenue Southeast for all to visit and enjoy.
Inez has many talents, including sewing, quilting and cooking.
Herman Jr. bragged of his mom’s cooking, saying, “She cooked good! Ooh! She’d cook a pot roast with all the potatoes and carrots in a deep iron skillet. It was so good! I remember those and the fried chicken, taters and gravy she made on Sunday.”
Inez also took an upholstery class at Wallace State back in the 1970s so she could refinish her own furniture.
Her advice for a long life?
“Hard work! Sticking with it.”
Herman Jr. described his mom as “very determined and a big part of this community.”
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