Ruth J Heflin

Ruth J. Heflin grew up in a small town in Kansas, the 10th of 10 children, the 7th of 7 daughters.Her father was the family storyteller, but her mother took her twice a month to the local library where she enjoyed checking out exactly eight books at a time. Ruth loved reading, having the great fortune of having many teachers help her learn the skill, so that she was proficient in reading, writing, and counting to 100 well before she began kindergarten.As a robust young girl, Ruth loved reading,...See more

Ruth J. Heflin grew up in a small town in Kansas, the 10th of 10 children, the 7th of 7 daughters.Her father was the family storyteller, but her mother took her twice a month to the local library where she enjoyed checking out exactly eight books at a time. Ruth loved reading, having the great fortune of having many teachers help her learn the skill, so that she was proficient in reading, writing, and counting to 100 well before she began kindergarten.As a robust young girl, Ruth loved reading, writing, drawing, riding horses, running around the family farm, and playing with her dog. Every morning, she helped feed the livestock, which included rabbits, chickens, ducks, cattle, her horse, and pigs, before going to school, a chore she did twice a day all the way through high school. After she bought her own horse while in high school, she rode her horse, Misty, every evening after her chores were done.Because of her size and assertive demeanor, running down a few basemen during sports when they refused to move, Ruth was nicknamed Moose by older boys in high school, but also Encyclo by her friends because one of her favorite habits was to sit in front of the tall bookcase her father had built that housed three different sets of encyclopedias and read them. When she did not understand a concept, she used another encyclopedia to look it up, resulting in her having a phenomenal knowledge of many things even as a teenager.Ruth's love of learning pushed her through three college degrees, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a doctorate-wherein she studied America's various ethnic cultures and gender. She also worked at Fort Riley one summer while pursuing her Master's degree at Kansas State University, which is why she chose to set Mrs. Nash's story in those places.Ruth first learned about Mrs. Nash, who actually lived at Fort Lincoln, Nebraska, while working on her doctorate at Oklahoma State University, but she studied various forms of transgendering, which has been labeled variously during her studies. Realizing that Mrs. Nash was the earliest verifiable reference to an EuroAmerican male who chose to present as female in American history (aka the first colorless trans woman), Ruth designed this screenplay, originally, as an ironic homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "wrong man" theme that runs through most of his films. See less