Visiting Babe Ruth's Mom's Grave in Baltimore - Entrepreneur Generations

In my 15 years in Baltimore, nearly every day I've passed the sprawling and old (established in 1882) Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery, which stretches nearly the entire length of Moravia Road between Walther Ave. and Belair Rd. in northeast Baltimore.

Most Holy Redeemer is a beautiful cemetery. Though not as stunning as Greenmount Cemetery (my blog about that one here), it bolsters hundreds of clean rows of headstones, some more than a century old. While it has few trees and not much landscaping, its rolling hills afford some of the best views of Baltimore that you can get anywhere. Many an evening I've driven by and been tempted to pull over to watch the sun set over the city and the headstones from its far west corner.

Even though the cemetery is huge and old, I previously thought its biggest claim to fame was hosting the first meeting between Kima and McNulty with Omar in The Wire (Season 1, Episode 5):

On The Wire, Omar met with Kima and McNulty for the 1st time at the back of Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery. It's a tense and terrific scene.

However, I recently discovered something about the cemetery that trumps even the meeting of iconic TV characters, at least in my mind: Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery hosts Babe Ruth's mom, Catherine Ruth, who has been buried there since her death in 1912. As fascinated as I am by old cemeteries, as well as the final resting places of important figures, combined with my love of baseball, well, it was one of my goals this summer to to find Ms. Ruth's grave and pay my respects.

First, a little bit of backstory: Catherine (Schamberger) Ruth lived a tough life. She was small (4'10") and in poor health, and gave birth to eight kids, with only two -- Babe and a sister -- surviving past infancy. She died at the age of 39 in 1912 of tuberculosis (Babe, born in 1895, would have been 17, however this piece says he was 13, so I'm not sure where the discrepancy comes). She died seven years after sending Babe, who was always in trouble around his Baltimore Ridgely's Delight neighborhood, to live and be educated at St. Mary's School for Boys, a reform school, and six years after George Herman Ruth, Sr., divorced her.

I just visited the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, NY, last week, and this below was part of the Babe Ruth exhibit. Especially interesting to me was the divorce notice in the newspaper; Babe's parents divorced in 1906 (four years after the family sent Babe to St. Mary's) and George Herman Ruth was awarded custody of the couple's three kids (11-year old Babe and 7-year old sister, plus an infant who didn't survive) after he accused Kate of drunkenness and infidelity. I imagine awarding sole custody to the father was not very common over a hundred years ago, but I also imagine Catherine, who worked at George Ruth's bar, had no real recourse to fight it. She died in a tuberculosis hospital, and I imagine didn't have much money.

Hall of Fame Exhibit about Babe Ruth's Baltimore childhood.

A brick from Babe Ruth's father's bar and from St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, Babe Ruth's school. (Hall of Fame exhibit).

Even though she was the mother of one of the most famous men in the world, "Katie" Ruth was buried in an unmarked grave at Most Holy Redeemer, until 2008, when a Baltimore attorney and Babe Ruth biographer Paul Harris (who passed away in 2012) raised awareness and, along with The Babe Ruth Museum, $1200 for the headstone that you see below to mark Katie's grave. This article details how this came about.

I visited her headstone yesterday and took some shots of the beautiful Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery. Below are some shots of the cemetery from that gorgeous June day.

Moravia Road entrance.

Catherine Ruth is located in Section G-2, which is in the northeast section of the cemetery, near Belair Road. Note that two headstones to the right are completely weathered and cannot be read. It's in an old part of the cemetery.

Section  G-2.

The headstone that Paul Harris lobbied to have added in 2008. It reads:
RUTH
CATHERINE
1878-1912
MOTHER OF
GEORGE HERMAN
"BABE"
RUTH, JR.

This is where I parked, so you can orient yourself to how far you'll have to walk off the road.

A shot from the back southwest corner of the cemetery, near where that Omar/McNulty/Kima meeting would have taken place. I love this shot. You can see a lot of Baltimore from up here.

A particularly weathered Mother Mary.

I returned for sunset and got this shot.

Posted rules. I returned to the cemetery at 8pm to watch the sunset, and the Belair Rd. entrance was open. I'm not sure what time that one closes.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/29t8J8a Visiting Babe Ruth's Mom's Grave in Baltimore - Entrepreneur Generations

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