San Francisco quake survivor
SAN FRANCISCO— Ruth Newman, thought to be one of two remaining survivors of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 that shattered the city, has died. She was 113.
More than 1,000 people were killed in the earthquake and fires. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, measurements of the 1906 quake have ranged from magnitude 7.7 to 8.3. Newman was 5 years old when the quake struck, shaking her home in a ranch about 110 kilometres north of San Francisco the early morning of April 18, 1906.
“She remembered being downstairs and her father picking her up and running out of the house,” said Newman’s daughter, Beverly Dobbs.
The family remained on the ranch, where she grew up, because the house wasn’t damaged, Dobbs said.
“She would tell us she remembered my grandmother being upset because they had just milked the cow earlier and she had separated the cream and all and put it in containers that got thrown to the floor,” Dobbs, 85, said.
Newman’s death leaves only one known earthquake survivor still living. William Del Monte, 109, was three months old when the earthquake hit, said Lee Housekeeper, an organizer of the quake’s commemoration events.
One of five children, Newman was a strong-willed woman — she drove and played golf until her mid-90s — who always kept busy knitting, gardening and baking.
Two of Newman’s siblings were also centenarians. Her older brother Barney Barnard lived to be 108 and their younger sister Genevieve Gully died at 103.
Newman never attended the annual earthquake commemorations events, which include a gathering at Lotta’s Fountain at Market and Kearny streets in downtown San Francisco before dawn, because she preferred to sleep in rather than wake up early for them, Dobbs said.