Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Action at a distance
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Stan's Mathematica notebooks document his later work and speculations

Grammy — everyone’s favorite grandmother
  • 1941 - 1981

She made each of her six grandchildren feel special

Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
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Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.

Just so—how the Rubys got their name
  • 1912 - 1939

When and why did Walter Rabinowitz take on our abbreviated last name? He may have gotten the idea during intermission at a Bronx nickelodeon

Liberal values in the 1960s
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From civil rights to war resistance to arms control, Ruby family members embraced liberal social causes

Memories of young Stan
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Stan was smart and fresh, with something to say about almost anything

Stan finds love outside of a 20-block radius
  • April 1946 - June 1947

Home from the war, Stan Ruby was a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. Helga Ringel was a smart, pretty war refugee from Berlin

The corkscrew on eBay—sourcing family artifacts
  • 1938 - 1939

Out of the files of the U.S. Patent Office and into the peculiar subculture of corkscrew collectors

The family secret behind grandfather's desk calendar
  • July 22 1939 -

A surprising artifact discovered after a parent's death leads to a series of discoveries and a new pastime in genealogy

The physics experiment that went wrong
  • 1951 - 1958

How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?

The problem with anti-ballistic missiles
  • October 6 1968 - March 10 1969

Stanley Ruby entered the public debate over nuclear missile technology in 1968-69.

Walter Ruby and the Carioca Cooler
  • 1933 - 1938

The U.S. liquor industry took off after the repeal of Prohibition. Walter Ruby was the marketing manager for the American Spirits company

Young man on the make in the Roaring Twenties
  • March 1919 - September 1929

Walter Ruby hustled his way as a traveling silver salesman, with some career side trips into boxing promotion and medicinal alcohol.