For 47 years, Ruth Harris was a radio and burlesque entertainer, singing and dancing with big-band orchestras across America, South America and Cuba.
But as she grew older and her sterling voice lost its sparkle, she sought other ways “to put smiles on people’s faces.’
She’s still entertaining, but she’s working a new venue. She offers jokes and show-biz stories, and once in a while she revives one of her wiggly dance routines and gets the smiles she’s looking for.
Now 83 years old, she has seen her audience turn from men and women out on the town to bed-bound and chronically ill seniors.
As a volunteer for the Senior Companion Program, she will be named one of America’s most dedicated volunteers next Friday in a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Harris has been a companion to 1,105 chronically ill seniors the past 24 years, during her second “entertainment’ career.
At 4 feet 2 inches, the woman known as “Baby Ruth’ – a stage name she gave herself – can barely see over the wheelchairs she pushes. Even standing, she often looks up to her seated friends.
She was coaxing smiles Thursday from lifelong asthma sufferer Joanne Gappa, at the residential Health Center at Franklin Park, east of downtown.
Now an octogenarian, Harris is older than many of the seniors she visits.
“I guess I’m the young’n here,’ says Gappa, 64.
“I’m the youngest of 16 children. My mother had a choir,’ Harris says, bringing laughter to the room.
“She’ll always have that entertainer in her,’ says Jackie Trainer, program manager for Denver’s Senior Companion Program, which nominated her for the national award.
“I think she deserves it, that’s for sure,’ says Gappa. “I don’t have any relatives. I don’t have anyone else to visit me here, to keep me company.’
Harris began her show-biz career as a 10-year-old star on radio singing in her hometown of Pittsburgh. She went on to perform with the likes of Count Basie, Erskine Hawkins and Lucky Millinder, she says. Later she entertained in San Francisco burlesque clubs in which she did a “suggestive dance routine,’ she says. She also performed in United Service Organization shows.
“My mother was very religious. Sometimes I had to slip around her,’ Harris said. “She supported me as long as I was singing the classics.’
Harris will be one of 25 older volunteers recognized by the MetLife Foundation and the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging next week.
She has been a companion to sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS and cancer over the years, working 20 hours a week despite her own arthritis. She always travels by bus. She’s too short to drive.
She arrived at the Franklin Park health center Monday to visit a half-dozen seniors despite the fact that schools, businesses and many neighborhoods were snowed under.
“She’s a perfect example that everything in life is attitude,’ says Trainer. “While we train our volunteers to be companions, they teach us what life is all about.’
Staff writer Dave Curtin can be reached at 303-820-1276 or dcurtin@denverpost.com.