Ruth Bloss (née Carey) graduated from the Indiana School for the Blind in 1945. She recently discussed her days there as a student and her life.

"The school had just opened in 1930 and my first semester was in the fall of 1933. It was almost brand new back then. At that time, it was just a dorm on the girls' and boys' side. Between those dorms was a large playground with a skating rink around it. The Lions Club donated a lot of skates - that was one of my favorite pastimes. We got a very good academic schooling. In the first few years I was there, some long-time teachers began retiring as younger teachers took their place," she recalled.

"My favorite classes were home economics and sewing. That was what I did for many, many years after graduation. I was in junior high when the school received their first sewing machine and was among the privileged ones who got to use it. We had sewing and cooking classes with the main curriculum being English, Math and History. We took French class for one year since the teacher was called to the Pentagon during the war," she said. "I also enjoyed gym classes. We worked with barbells and dumbbells. They didn't have much athletic equipment then like they do now. It wasn't until later years that they had a swimming pool right across from the basement that was located across from the gym area. A minister took us to chapel services on Sunday mornings and teachers invited various speakers for a Wednesday chapel services program at ISB," she added.

"I met Byron Bloss (her future husband) at school during the sixth grade. When World War II occurred, I was in high school and my husband's brothers went into service. Byron left school to return home to look after his father. He went through the first eight grades and began working at the Board of Industrial Aid for the Blind on West 30th Street, which is now known as Bosma Enterprises. He worked in their warehouse, loading and unloading 400 to 500-pound broom cords and broom wires for 39 years, providing workers with brooms and materials," she said.

"Back at that time, ISB's vocational and rehabilitation program was just beginning. Erskine Miller was its director. He taught Byron piano tuning and was going to place him in a job in Bluffton, but they didn't have any openings. He was going to work at a basket factory, but it burned down and later at a radio cabinet manufacturer (both in Peru), but they went on strike. Byron tried a lot of different jobs before working in the broom factory. Erskine (a 1944 ISB alumni), was a year ahead of me in school and we all grew up together," Ruth mentioned.

Ruth recalled some extracurricular activities in which she participated: "We were privileged to go to the Symphony. They stressed learning classical music and I learned to play the violin. We didn't have jazz bands then. One thing about my being in the orchestra is that we traveled sometimes. ISB borrowed the Indiana Deaf School's bus one time when we went to Fort Wayne and saw a musical program where Helen Keller made an appearance. We got to meet her when I was in junior high," she said.

"We translated music into Braille that we played. We learned to read and write music just like reading and writing a letter. Byron could sing in perfect pitch. He would practice an acoustic guitar in the dorms and sing while a friend accompanied him on mandolin," she noted.

"From the seventh grade on, we took field trips in the spring to Broad Ripple Park where we had picnics and during the fall, we walked to the Vogue Theater to see movies", she added.