Special
Features / April 2007
Roads to Roane
 Becky Bolte
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By Pat Lawrence
Becky Bolte was born and raised in Charleston, but she has another life in Roane County. Actually, she has two lives in Roane County. One is a woman whose hardships and contributions passed virtually unnoticed. The other is a nationally recognized war hero, perhaps the most decorated women in US military history.
Becky started at Virginia Tech and finished her degree at George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville. She taught for a year, before starting her family. “After that, I used my education to raise my four children. I never felt the education was wasted. I volunteered in the schools and really used my education in different ways.”
Using her education ‘in different ways’, she has reached many more children than her own, and has enlightened and delighted thousands of adults across the state.
According to Becky, “In the middle of Spencer, there’s a rock overhang that was a shelter for Indians, and later, settlers. There’s a historical marker on the courthouse lawn that says in 1812 Samuel Tanner settled there, and the place was named ‘Tanners Crossroads.’ There was no mention of a woman, but I knew a farmer would have to have a good woman keeping the home fires burning!”
The woman was Sudnar Carpenter Tanner. In the spring of 2000, Becky began introducing the frontierswoman, bringing her out of the shadows of the past, sharing her stories. “They lived the first winter under that rock, she and her husband and another man. Half the shelter was used for their animals. They barely survived. They arrived late in the season and didn’t have time for a decent crop.”
The development of Sudnar was part of a WV Humanities Council grant, the result of a combined effort that included Becky, the city, schools, the Tri-County Partnership and entertaining, interactive activities revolving around three different periods of the county.
A friend who had seen Sudnar’s portrayal brought a new idea to Becky and was instrumental in what became her new project. “She said Colonel Ruby Bradley was another Roane County woman with a story that needed to be told. It was 2004, I was newly single and hadn’t found any work that was satisfying. The Humanities Council was advertising for people to present character ideas. I answered, and spent the next year developing Ruby Bradley’s story.”
Colonel Ruby Bradley, a native of Spencer, WV, was an Army surgical nurse in the Philippines in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Three weeks later, she and 63 other nurses were captured. They remained prisoners of war for three years. Ruby weighed just 86 pounds when US troops liberated the camp. Five years after returning to a hero’s welcome in West Virginia, she returned to the battlefields as a frontline Army nurse in evacuation hospitals in Korea. In November, 1950 She left Pyongyang, surrounded by thousands of Chinese soldiers, only after loading all sick and wounded soldiers in her care on to the plane, escaping just in time. The ambulance exploded behind her. She left Korea two years later at a send off with an international honor guard, a first for a woman. Her military record included 34 medals and citations of bravery, including two Legion of Merit medals and two Bronze stars. She was finally awarded the rank of colonel in 1958.
“Ruby once admitted it was not the life Army recruiters promised in 1933!”
Becky’s research on Ruby started with the people in Spencer that knew her. “I spent a day in Kentucky with Ruby’s nephew, Charles and saw her personal effects. In Washington, I met the Army Nurse Historian and looked through the archives.” Still, finding all the information she wants is frustrating. “Documents are in many different places. There’s a television tape of Ruby I still haven’t seen. I don’t have a complete picture of her yet, but I keep finding out more.”
She is moved by Ruby’s story when she tells it. “The nurses could hear the fighting and knew there was always the possibility the Japanese would destroy the camp. For 37 months, they didn’t know what their future would be. And they didn’t know how they’d be received when they got home.”
Almost accidentally, Becky discovered her father had been in many of the same places in the Philippines during the war. “He saw Ruby’s papers on my desk. I simply didn’t understand the geography and how close things were.” Her father was at the end of his life, but Becky took her son and presented Colonel Bradley to what would be his unit’s last reunion. “There were only six of them. They remembered. I helped them remember.”
This month, Becky will take Colonel Ruby Bradley to the VA Center in Clarksburg. “I’ve saved some time to talk to the veterans; I always learn from them.”
Becky says, “I’m not an actress or a historian, though I wish I were. But I try to make it dramatic, and still keep Ruby’s formal, military manner. People say, ‘You make us laugh, you make us cry. That’s pretty good, I think.”
For more information, contact Becky Bolte, 304-346-2824.
Copyright © 2007 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
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