Ruth Fletcher - Character Analysis...

Jared Michael Brown
Acting Class – Lank
Character Analysis

Well, I grew up in Poole, Kentucky where my mother and father were born and grew up, and I’ve never lived anywhere else. Poole is a small town about 25 minutes south of Henderson, KY where I was trained as a surgical technologist while I was taking care of my other siblings. Back then you didn’t need to go to college for a career, so I never thought to apply at any of the Universities, I just thought of going straight into the field of nursing, and I was able to be trained with room for advancement. Hell, I never got out of it, I loved it so much. And for thirty years I was stationed at the Methodist Hospital in Henderson, got married, and had 4 children.

After thirty years of working in that intense atmosphere, because the ER is pretty much the most intense atmosphere to work in, I thought, well I should probably be done with this, so I retired for a few years and worked on the house in Poole. I worked at growing my garden, fixing up the house little by little, and finally meeting some of my neighbors. I had held such strange hours that I wasn’t ever able to get to know my neighbors at all. Well, still having ties to the Hospital allowed me to take little jobs here and there delivering food and medicine to elderly patients who were fortunate enough to be at home, so I would go and visit people, and some of them ended up being right down the block from me, how about that, huh?
I love working in my garden, and I love baking, in fact (after this… whatever it happens to be) I’m going to go home and bake 50 pies for my church’s autumn social that’s coming up back in Henderson, at United Methodist. I’m making chocolate crème pies, every single one of them, because they go so quickly and they always complain if I don’t bring enough of one kind, so I’m just baking 50 chocolate crème pies so everyone will be happy. I’m guilty of eating some of the batter though, I have to confess. But you know, it keeps me happy. And you know, I don’t have to worry about going running or exercising, just as long as I keep working in my garden, I figure in about a year I can loose 10 or so pounds that I want to, so extra batter is no biggie.
Well, anyway, my daughter who lives here in Evansville works at St. Mary’s and she told me that the ER at St. Mary’s was looking for some people who were experienced in surgical procedure to stand in for a few weeks. Well a few weeks turned into 7 more years, so I was out of retirement, and came back in! Kind of crazy how life works like that. You’d think after so long in a hospital I’d get tired of it, but I haven’t yet. I love it, and I love the people there, too.