Julia Ruth Stevens, long-time resident and innkeeper of Conway, N.H., died on Saturday at the age of 102. She was perhaps better known for her association with her adopted father, George Herman "Babe" Ruth.
In 2004, The Front Porch (NHPR’s nightly arts program until 2007) travelled to Conway to speak with Julia Ruth Stevens. Stevens spoke to NHPR’s John Walters about living with the most famous man in America, “we never thought about it when we were all at home. He was Daddy and we were just like any other family.”
Ruth met Stevens’s mother, Clara Mae Hodgson, at a Yankees-Senators game in Washington in 1923. At a post-game party, she famously said “Mr. Ruth, you drink too much!” It was the start of a six year courtship that culminated with nuptials on opening day, 1929.
Though she was a died-in-the-wool Yankees fan growing up, Stevens has since switched her allegiance to the Red Sox. In this interview she dismisses the Curse of the Bambino as a fabrication, saying “Daddy would never have done that.” This interview originally aired a month before the Sox put that curse – real or imagined – to rest by staging one of the most dramatic post-season come-from-behind victories against the Yankees on their way to winning their first World Series in 86 years.
