For her part, Selma Ruby responded to the tragedy of her husband’s death by continuing to give love—especially to the grandchildren who would begin arriving within about a half decade of Walter’s death.

Walter, Dan, and Joanne Ruby remember Selma with great fondness, but they lived at a geographical distance from her in Pittsburgh and Chicago, and saw her only once a year or less.

It should be acknowledged that we have, at this point, no proof that the Gonif actually existed or that he was in fact the son of the Kovno Rav. If the Rav indeed married as early as 1830, he could certainly have had a son who would have been around 20 at the time of the Crimean War. According to Zalman Alpert, if such a wayward son in fact existed, Rabbi Spektor would likely have preferred not to acknowledge his paternity in the respectable world of Russian Jewry.

They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, but this crab apple landed in a whole different district.

Way back in 2006, about the time this blog was also getting started, Walter authored a wonderful first written draft of the Ruby family history.

It was titled The Ruby Family Histories — The Early Lives of Stanley and Helga Ruby. Fourteen years later, despite some errors and information not yet known, it is very much well worth reading. It is available in the sidebar to download as a PDF. 

Most of the contents of the document never made it into the blog, leaving holes in the blog narrative that could be filled in with Walter's writings.