Ruth Josephine Wallner Grosboll passed away on January 10, 2010, in Wichita, Kansas. She worked at Steps to Life Ministries for over 15 years and has been a regular contributor to LandMarks magazine.
John and Ruth arrived in Burma in 1947 just at the time the country was entering a long civil war. John became the business manager of the Rangoon Mission Hospital and, for a time, Ruth was the only nurse qualified to assist the two or three physicians working at the hospital so she gained much experience from the many surgeries in which she assisted. Help was required to take care of their children while they both worked, so a housekeeper was hired. In the latter part of 1949 John was hospitalized after developing tuberculosis so it was decided to fly the entire family back to the United States where John could be treated at the White Memorial Hospital, in California, in the early part of 1950. Later that year, John and Ruth decided to settle again, for the time being, in Toppenish, Washington. For a few weeks they lived with Ruth’s parents, Joe and Agnes Wallner, and afterwards rented a two-car garage where their family lived for one year. The garage had a bathroom and a kitchenette and was located behind Elmer and Maizie Williams’ (Ruth’s oldest sister and brother-in-law) home and also next door to one of the Adventist physicians in the town of Toppenish.
The city, recognizing the need for their own hospital, had recently opened a community hospital and for a short time Ruth became the superintendent of nurses. While John was supposed to be resting and recuperating from tuberculosis, he decided to build a house. They purchased 5 acres of land ¾ mile from town and John built the first house that they had ever owned. In 1952 while living in this house their third child and only daughter was born. Their first son had been named after his father, their second son had been given a name by their first son and this time Ruth announced to the family that she was going to name this girl herself. She did not need any other opinions because she had already decided on the name she had chosen for this girl. It was Gwen. She did, however, allow her husband to select a middle name and he chose his mother’s name.
John became the credit manager of the Toppenish Community Hospital. In winter, the sun went down around 4 o’clock and being a faithful Sabbath keeper, John told the business manager that he could not work after sundown on Friday; however, he was willing to make up the time on Sunday if allowable. The manager told him that if he could not work until 5 o’clock on Friday he would need to find another job so John prepared to leave and look for work elsewhere. When the manager discovered how serious John was about his religion he immediately changed his mind, telling him that he could take off at noon on Friday when he needed to and work half a day Sunday. The friendship John and his family developed with this man lasted for many years.
John and Ruth both had good jobs and they owned their house and land without debt. They lived less than a mile from an Adventist church school where their children were able to attend through the eighth grade and only a few miles from Granger, Washington, where they could attend up to the tenth grade. They covered the whole area, distributing literature about the Three Angels’ Messages and the end of the world, giving many Bible studies that resulted in baptisms; however, John was not completely satisfied; he wanted to be more directly involved in God’s work.
The hospital where he worked was not a missionary hospital, but simply a commercial community hospital, so in 1954 he accepted an invitation to become the credit manager for Madison Sanitarium, a self-supporting sanitarium and college where he himself had gone to school briefly in 1934 and 1935. The family home was sold once more and they moved to Madison, Tennessee, where they lived until 1955. During that short period of time, about 15 months, it appeared that tragedy would again strike their family. Gwen, at two years of age, was exposed to Rabies and had to have injections in her stomach for 14 days and Marshall fell from a ladder and had both a head concussion and a ruptured spleen which almost caused him to bleed to death. As ominous as these things were, an even more ominous development caused the entire family to be placed in jeopardy. Ruth developed a lung disease which the physicians said could be fatal and which, it was said, could not be cured. John and Ruth had purchased a home on an acre of land about ¾ of a mile from Madison sanitarium.
In 1955 John decided to accept an invitation from his brothers to come and manage the new nursing home in Longmont, Colorado, that they had built, so in late summer of that year John, Ruth and their three children moved there, without selling their home in Tennessee. They rented a home between Hygiene and Lyons, Colorado, on historic Highway 66 right across from McCall Lake. This move to Colorado was most rewarding and satisfying and within six weeks after moving to that dry climate, Ruth’s cough disappeared and never reappeared as long as she was in a dry climate.
The next year they built a home across the street from Foothill’s Nursing Home and four years later sold that home and moved to an 80 acre farm with a home and out buildings. This proved to be too much to manage along with a nursing home so in 1963 John built yet another home near Berthoud, about five miles from Campion Academy where all of their children graduated. John and Ruth managed Foothill’s Nursing Home until 1975 and it grew to having 180 beds and over 115 workers on the staff.
1975 saw yet another move and their home in Berthoud was sold, enabling them to purchase a small fruit orchard near Weiser, Idaho. Ruth enjoyed working with fruit trees, berries and vineyards but John did not, so the orchard was sold and another home in Nyssa, Idaho, was bought where they lived a short time before moving to Prosser, Washington. While living in Nyssa, John covered the entire area with literature about the Three Angels’ Messages and the end of the world.
From 1980 until 1992 John and Ruth lived in Prosser, Washington, on a property which had fruit and nut trees, berries and vineyards which Ruth loved to take care of. Ruth always wanted to see an agricultural program developed at Steps to Life but she did not live long enough to see that fully develop. Gardening was not the only thing to occupy Ruth and at times she also worked either full-time or part-time as a registered nurse until 1992.
Again, tragedy struck their family in 1991 when in July, John and Ruth’s second son, Marshall, together with his wife Lillian and their two children, Matthew and Christine, were all killed in a plane crash near Salmon, Idaho. It was shortly after this that they decided to move to the Wichita, Kansas area. It was there that Marshall, who was an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister, had furthered the outreach ministry that he had started while pastoring on the east coast of the United States. At first, this ministry was conducted under the auspices of the local conference and Union Conference in mid-America, but later it became necessary to be totally independent of the organizations connected with the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and conduct a ministry in what Ellen White described as “irregular lines.”
Ruth and John again purchased five acres of land a few miles from the Steps to Life Ministry offices. They put a modular house on it, planted fruit trees and berries and also tended the grapes that were on the property. They lived there until another tragedy hit the family. John was struck by a car and instantly killed in April of 2000. Ruth was about 50 feet away and witnessed this fatal accident.
Ruth worked in the ministry of Steps to Life in almost every department, and over the last several years she was the main receptionist, answering the telephone during business hours and responding by letter to inquiries as well as writing material for LandMarks magazine. Her heart was in the finishing of God’s work in the world. She reminded our staff over and over again about our need to pray for brotherly love for all human beings and our great need to pray for and receive the Holy Spirit. Ruth was no stranger to tragedy but this only strengthened her faith. She was looked to for counsel by people all over the world and she was often called for advice, or simply a word of encouragement.
Ruth was an astute observer about the happenings in the church among the professed people of God and also world events. She was an early riser ever since her youth when she had to have the cows milked before going to school and she studied her Bible and the writings of Ellen White every morning. She was very concerned about the state of apostasy that she saw everywhere among God’s professed people. She loved poetry and had several books of poems that she used to read. At 93 years of age she still raised a garden and baked bread every week or two as well as canning and freezing fruit every summer.
Ruth had studied nutrition on her own in order to know how best to provide her family with a healthful diet and later studied nutrition at the University of Colorado. She was well-read in the area of natural remedies, hydrotherapy, and natural treatments.
Grandma Ruth, as she was affectionately called by many, worked her last day on December 31, 2009. She will be sadly missed by all of her family as well as many others who had the privilege of associating with her. We look forward to a glad reunion with her and all others who arrive at character perfection in the very near future.
Pastor John Grosboll is Director of Steps to Life and pastors the Prairie Meadow Church in Wichita, Kansas. He may be contacted by e-mail at: historic@stepstolife.org, or by telephone at: (316) 788-5559.