This is the biography that was submitted to the National AMI Yearbook in 1977:
Ruby Timms Price, 1977
At sixty-one, Ruby Price together with Ralph, her husband, are proud of their children, Mrs. Jessie Price Tave, Ralph Price, Jr., DeAne R. Price, Deon P. McDonald and DeVon R Price. Ruby was educated at Butler Seminary, Weber College, Utah State, and Brigham Young University. She received certificates is Elementary and Secondary Education, Home Economics and graduate work in Psychology and Counseling. Ruby is the first black person to teach in Utah, and taught for 20 years.
Ruby (age 95) holding the statue she received as 1977 Utah Mother of the Year
Taken by Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune
Mrs. Price has been a leader in aiding the poor, handicapped, retarded, and school dropouts. Girl Scouts had her leadership, too. She started a scholarship fund in Community Church, raised building funds. Ruby was a delegate to White House Conventions for the handicapped and was on the PTA Board. The Boeing Aircraft Award was bestowed for her outstanding teaching. A Sunday School teacher, she was named Church Mother by Bishop Tindley. She was appointed by the Governor to serve on the Advisory Council for Black Affairs.
– – – – –
In 2017 Ruby continues to impact people and remain active in her community. She is known as “Grandma Ruby.” A recent newspaper article shared some of her additional accomplishments:
Ruby Timms Price, 2015
- In 1991 she was awarded the Joint Action in Community Service Inc. award as National Volunteer of the Year for service to the Clearfield Job Corps Center.
- First President of the Ogden branch of the NAACP
- Additionally, she served on statewide ethnic advisory boards, launched Scout programs for boys and girls in Davis County, volunteered for a nonprofit that helped people with disabilities.
- Her last recorded volunteering stint was speaking to at-risk teens.
- In 2011 Davis School District named four scholarships after her that will be awarded to college-bound minority students who want to be teachers.
There is a story that is told that happened in the late 1940s when she went to the Davis School District superintendent to apply for a teaching position, a profession she had practiced in Texas before she moved to Utah in 1943.
“He said, ‘We have never hired Negroes and we will not hire Negroes in the Davis School District,'” Price recalls. “I said to him, ‘I’m not asking you to hire Negroes. I am asking you to hire me.'” Several years later she was hired to work for the Davis Schools after the civil rights movement opened some doors.
(http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/home/51054573-76/price-ruby-says-davis.html.csp)
Price was raised in Kilgore, Texas, where her family owned land and were well-educated. She was not the type of person to give up!