Free The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher Page A

from a strong home and made good grades. His problem was bullying. A self-described nerd, Kendrick loved Greek mythology and Sherlock Holmes mysteries—unusual tastes for West Feliciana sixth-grade boys, especially so for African American kids. Kendrick took loads of taunting from classmates for his love of reading. Ruthie phoned me one night in Washington to tell me about this kid in her class who was smart and bookish, but whose spirit was being broken by bullying. This was the first time she had a student like this, and she wanted my advice.
    “The thing he can’t see now is that the rest of his life is not going to be like the sixth grade,” I said. “You need to let him know that there’s nothing wrong with him for liking books. You need to let him know that he shouldn’t give up, and that once he gets out of school, life is going to be great.”
    “Would you write him a letter?” Ruthie asked. “I think it would mean a lot.”
    I told her I would. I sent it off the following week.
    For her part Ruthie took Kendrick aside and told him he reminded her of her brother when he was younger.
    “My brother is a reporter for a newspaper in Washington, DC, now,” Ruthie told him. “You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it. Don’t let these kids get you down.”
    Today, working in human resources for a Fortune 500 company in Houston, Kendrick says that the patience and encouragement Ruthie gave him—“She always, always had time for you, no matter what,” he says—was even more important than the knowledge she imparted.
    “Mrs. Leming taught me that it was okay that I didn’t want to be on the football field or in the streets doing bad things,” he says. “Shewould even go as far as recommending books to me. She watched the type of books that I liked to read, and when we would go on library trips, she would hand-pick books from the shelf and say, ‘I think you might like this one.’ That’s how she was. We weren’t just names and faces to her. She saw us.”

    I didn’t see my sister let her hair down as much as I would have liked. That side came out when she was with her girlfriends. Many were her fellow teachers in West Feliciana schools. Ashley Harvey, Jennifer Bickham (no relation to John), Karen Barron, Jodi Knight, and Rae Lynne Thomas were her running buddies. Leading the pack was Abby Temple, who had become Ruthie’s closest friend not long after she arrived as a teacher in 2002.
    In high school Abby was a freckle-faced beanpole a year behind Ruthie. They didn’t know each other well. Abby left St. Francisville, but came home after a painful divorce. When a job teaching sixth grade opened up, Abby took it—and became best friends with Ruthie.
    Because Abby was the temperamental opposite of Ruthie, theirs was a somewhat improbable friendship. Abby was tempestuous; Ruthie was serene. Abby was restless and questioning; Ruthie was content and accepting. Faith came hard to Abby; believing was easy for Ruthie. Abby loved the exotic and wanted to travel the world; Ruthie craved the rustic and the familiar. Abby was always in a hurry; Ruthie had time for everyone. Abby loved to argue; Ruthie sought harmony above all.
    They adored each other.
    What Abby loved most about Ruthie was her genuine nature. Ruthie wasn’t the kind of Southern woman who would tell you something honey-dripping to your face, then wield the stiletto when you weren’t looking. And Ruthie was wise. She had strong convictions, but if you went to her for advice, she listened, really listened, and withheldjudgment until she had thought hard about your problem. Abby took her pain and confusion over her divorce, her loneliness, her dating life, and her anxiety about the future to Ruthie. Whatever the particulars of her advice, Ruthie never told Abby to write somebody off.
    “A lot of people would say, ‘You shouldn’t be around that person,’ ” says Abby. “That wasn’t Ruthie. She was always, ‘Let’s