"I grew up in Cass County about three miles from Grissom Air Force Base. Since we were four miles from other small towns, we walked to places. After I was home on the farm for three and a half years, sewing for the workshop after graduation, they began mailing materials to me where I sewed ironing board covers, hospital aprons and gowns. I was listening to Chicago radio station WLS at home one day while sewing and recognized Byron's voice. He sang and played acoustic guitar in an Elkhart talent show where he won a prize to take a train to Chicago to see the Cubs play. I called him and we got reacquainted. He continued playing music as a hobby and also played piano in later years," she said.

"Byron and I got married in December of 1949 and moved to Indianapolis where we later had three children. I continued sewing for the workshop here in town. They sent the materials to us and we sent back the finished items. We also made centerpiece bouquets for baby showers and weddings," she said. "In addition to sewing, I would babysit and also had some radio monitoring jobs where stations would check on each other's advertising and programming. We would take three to four hour segments during the day and monitor the commercials," she added.

"I think that growing up in the dormitory, we were like sisters. Even today, people ask me, 'why do you stick together after all these years?' I tell them that we grew up together. We were like brothers and sisters. I went home about once a month. Even through high school and on weekends, I still got kind of homesick. Back then, they were plowing farm fields on the west side of College Avenue. I took the Interurban home a few times that ran on North College Avenue next to the school," she recalled.

"It (the campus) seemed like the country there in the city. I wished that I were home helping my father milk cows. They had a garden at the school where vegetables were grown located near the boy's dorm. It wasn't like it is now with the greenhouse and the Christmas tree farm," she said.

"The high school boys had a candy store, but they wouldn't take us over there. Our house mother purchased candy for us whenever we gave her the money. Girls and boys were very segregated at that time. Boys used the tunnel in the afternoon and the stairs in the morning while the girls used the tunnel in the morning and the stairs in the afternoon to attend classes. The stairways were on opposite sides of the auditorium," she explained.

"There was event called Exhibition Day that took place the next to last day of school. The band played in the gym. Various sewing items and brooms were available for sale to the general public as parents arrived to pick up their children and take them home for the summer," she said. Exhibition Day is now called Field Day, where various athletic events occur. Faculty and students are also recognized for their work during the past school year.

The gym was often used for indoor skating, Christmas and spring dances. In later years, it was converted into a student center. The playground and skating rink were replaced by a gym and bowling alley that were built in 1974.

"I still visit campus for their Alumni Weekend that takes place every two years the first weekend in June. I was an alumni secretary for about 25 years, working with Robert Easterling (ISB Class of 1965) where we worked in the dorms on business materials for the Alumni Association," she noted.

"I enjoyed school. We published our own school paper in Braille. Students in the seventh grade and on up could join the Newspaper Club - I was an editor for a few years. We assembled it, stapled it and mailed it. It was called the Indiana Recorder then. In later years, not in my time, it was produced in Braille and mailed from Louisville, Kentucky," she noted.

"The biggest class at that time was in 1934 that had 12 students which stood for many years. It wasn't until the 1980s that there were larger graduating classes. Mario Peroni from that 1934 class went through law school with his brother who was sighted to the University of Notre Dame. Two of his daughters are currently working on a book about their growing up with blind parents. The family grew up in Muncie," she noted.

"My dad, Elias Carey, wrote a newspaper article in 1923 that appeared in The Matilda Paper that recently marked its 100th anniversary as a Blind publication. Printed entirely in Braille, it profiles the lives of blind people living across America. Matilda Ziegler was heir to a baking power company. After her first husband died, she later married William Ziegler, a global traveler. Her legacy continues today as the paper bearing her name is published worldwide. Dad never knew about ISB until the mid-1920s. His two brothers purchased a Braille writer and taught him how in addition to a typewriter. My mother attended grades one through eight at the School for the Blind in Baltimore," she recalled.

"My mom, Virginia Cross, received the newspaper, read my father's article and wrote to him. That's how my parents met - my dad was a farmer and a gardener, raising cattle, hogs and chickens. They shared ongoing correspondence as dad's older sister went to Baltimore and spent a month or so getting to know her family. This eventually resulted in their meeting and getting married in 1924," she reminisced.

"An auctioneer who was a friend of my dad that knew about ISB always talked about what a wonderful valedictorian speech he heard given by Bernice Bowers Johnson in 1923. With his encouragement, the auctioneer brought my dad to the school to visit and met her. I met Bernice in later years at an Alumni Association meeting and told the story to her," she mentioned.

"In August of 1997, then ISB Superintendent Michael Bina called me to speak with the faculty at their first meeting before school started. I told them, 'What a privilege you have in teaching school. Time goes by so fast in life. Before you know it, your students will be grown and they may be teaching or working with you."

On August 7, 2000, Ruth Bloss received the ISB Superintendent's Alumni Tower Award for being a positive role model for her distinguished service. One of her classmates, Elizabeth Jane Butler, worked for Elizabeth Wishard at the Indiana State Library. Wishard compiled a history of ISB's first 100 years for part of her 1951 master's degree dissertation at Butler University. Two reserve copies of it can be read at the school's Irwin Library.

Ruth Bloss is one of three living members of ISB's Class of 1945, along with O'Dell Taylor, Jr. of Muncie and Catharina Martin, who resides in a Cleveland suburb. They stay in frequent contact with each other, sharing memories of yesterday today.