Member Profile: Ruth Yarbrough's 'Service of Joy'

Ruth Evelyn Shipp Yarbrough

By J.S. Corser, Publisher

Durham Co. Master Gardener

 

Indian poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore contemplated the idea of “service of joy” in his famous quote,

 

   “I slept and dreamed that life was joy, 

   I woke and saw that life was duty,

   I acted and behold: duty was joy.”

Garden Club business leader Ruth Evelyn Shipp Yarbrough learned about Tagore in her college days at Ole Miss and formed her life’s mission around those words. Ruth is well-known for her 5 decades of exacting business leadership for The Garden Club of North Carolina, Inc. (GCNC) as President (1983-1985) and in numerous offices and committee chair roles for GCNC, its District 9, the South Atlantic Region (SAR) of National Garden Clubs and its Board, and also several roles for the Durham Council of Garden Clubs including Parliamentarian since 2000. What people may not know about Ruth is that she has been a formidable change agent for various improvements for Durham and North Carolina, including campaigning state and federal government for initiatives in clean air and women’s privacy laws in publishing, and is an award-winning author herself.

Ruth grew up in Red Banks, Mississippi, and earned a Baccalaureate in Science and Commerce, majoring in Auditing and Accounting, in 1946 from Ole Miss University where she met her husband Madison Yarbrough, Jr. They met in September 1945 and married November 24, 1946. The two began their careers in the 1950s in Memphis and Durham, the latter where they settled to help manage the Yarbrough family’s furniture business. Ruth had been employed as the first female, full-time accountant in Durham during that time before she began raising their young family. 

"Every organization I’ve ever been in I’ve been Treasurer. Church, everything else!” she said, adding today she does some accounting work for the Yarbrough’s furniture business.



Ruth enjoyed several media mentions in Durham

during her 50+ years tenure with garden clubs.

This image appeared in the Durham Herald in the 1960s.

In 1961, she joined the Woodlawn Garden Club of Durham that gave her a leadership outlet, with five years as President and decades of service through 2008. (Back in the 1960s she said she was stunned the group welcomed her children to accompany her to meetings and gave them their own play space!) 

 

Beautifying Durham became a mission for Ruth with so much available downtown and urban space for tree planting and other garden initiatives. Trees, Ruth said, are her favorite element of the garden as they have the largest presence and ability to filter air pollution and provide bird sanctuary.

“I use to lie in the swing on my Grandfather’s front porch and I was mesmerized by the beauty of trees. They had a calming effect on me and I have had a love-affair with trees to this day,” she said.

 

Through membership in the Durham Council of Garden Clubs, Ruth was able to be a frequent gardening advice guest on “The Peggy Mann Show” which aired midday on Durham’s ABC affiliate WTVD from 1954-1980. Individual Durham garden clubs took turns as guests on the show. Ruth said she enjoyed giving presentations for attracting birds to the garden and even once spoke on tax preparation using her accounting background. 

 

Receiving the 1969 "Keep America Beautiful" award for Durham.

Pictured L-R: Helen Floyd, Emma Randolph, President William May of

Keep America Beautiful, Durham Mayor Wense Garbarek and Ruth.

Her most high profile project on the Council happened in 1969, when Ruth co-chaired with Helen Floyd the application for the national “Keep America Beautiful” award for Durham. She drove the project to incorporate cleaning up urban spaces in all of Durham. Ruth noted that she enjoyed tremendous Durham media and city support for the project, even getting its own phone line for residents to call in what area they were going to clean. In addition, Ruth and Helen coordinated with Durham’s black women’s garden clubs which had not been a common practice in the 1960s. Durham subsequently won the 1969 national award. Fourteen people from Durham attended the ceremony in New York, including: Helen Floyd, Emma Randolph, President William May of Keep America Beautiful, Durham Mayor Wense Garbarek and Ruth.

 

Ruth recalls giving more than two decades of joyful service to The Garden Club of NC, Inc. during the 1970s-1980s. 

As Treasurer she established a permanent set of books/finance records from the yellow legal pads she inherited from previous treasurers, a monumental task in of itself. As a member of the GCNC Scholarship Committee, Ruth worked to help raise and award dozens of scholarships to Durham students. She once spoke on behalf of the GCNC at the commencement celebration of the School of Design, Landscape Architecture Department of North Carolina State University.

Ruth served as the 30th President of GCNC from 1983-85. Building upon her work for the Keep America Beautiful award, Ruth and the garden clubs traveled to Washington, D.C. during her presidency and lobbied Congress for national clean air programs and provided tree workshops in 1983 and 1985. 

Ruth (L) greeting HRH Princess Anne (R) at the "400th Anniversary of America" reception held

at the Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo, NC, in 1984.

 

One of the many highlights she enjoyed during her tenure as President of GCNC, was in 1984 hosting the “400th Anniversary of America” celebration for the first landing by Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to Roanoke. The event was held at the Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo, NC and attended by North Carolina dignitaries like Governor Jim Hunt and British dignitaries including Her Royal Highness Princess Anne. Before Ruth could receive HRH, she said the secret service had to run their customary sweep of the property. (Frogmen were in the Roanoke Sound protecting as she passed over the bridge, Ruth recalled.) Given Ruth’s family background with the furniture industry, she said she was able to help open secret compartments on a desk that they were having much trouble inspecting. One of the foreign guests, Lord Mayor of Plymouth remarked the North Carolina Elizabethan Gardens property “had better gardens than Buckingham Palace.” Another lively attendee, Sir Jeffery Gilbert who was a 9th generation from a brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, casually invited her to visit his home some time—his dwelling, unbeknown to her, was Compton Castle, the “dramatic fortified manor” in Marldon, Devon. 

Preparation for a reception of British Royalty, however, was less work than the convention planning she did as a Co-Chair for the National Garden Club’s 1993 Annual Meeting, held at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Ruth sat on the NGC Board and worked a total of five years organizing this particular national meeting. The keynote speaker was CBS broadcast journalist Charles Kuralt who at the time was producing his travelogue show “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” 

Other Passions 

Ever civic-minded and an advocate for women, Ruth also stepped outside of her regular gardening organization role to lead North Carolina legislation protecting women’s privacy in publishing. The 1978 Durham Herald news story that brought her to action was a crime article involving a serial rapist attacking women and girls in the Trinity Park neighborhood. The accused attacker and the names of his victims were both published for public consumption by the newspaper. Outraged, Ruth worked with the Durham Women’s Club (of which she was a member) to lobby the NC legislature in prohibiting this practice by North Carolina media. While she has not been aware of any state statute actually passed, the names of sexual assault victims have since been absent in Durham reporting. 

Ruth’s service of joy outside gardening organizations also extends to her family legacy in the form of genealogy. She won the 2007 North Carolina Genealogical Award for her book “Remember Who You Are” which chronicled 21 families of the Yarbrough and Shipp ancestry. Ruth wrote the book from 1999-2006, long before genealogy search websites, and researched using public records from County Courthouses, libraries, graveyards, and historical archives. The index cites 3,000 references. Genealogy is a passion inherited from her mother who liked to keep as much memorabilia of family history as possible. “Remember Who You Are” is in the historical archives of in many national university libraries. Librarians and others have purchased the book from Alaska down the West Coast, through the southern Midwest, the South, up the East Coast, and at least one copy for English libraries, she said. 

Ruth also taught Sunday School in Durham consecutively for 41 years. 



Flipping through the pages of a scrapbook

made by her granddaughter.



Garden Club Organization Professional Service Highlights*

Garden Clubs

• Ruth was a member of the Durham Woodland Garden Club beginning in 1961, serving as President five years)
• 1960s - Concurrently member of Margaret Brawley Garden Club after the Woodlawn Garden Club dropped state affiliation to GCNC
• Present member of the Daylily Garden Club since 2008.

Durham Council of Garden Clubs

• Ruth served as President (1990-1992), also served terms as Treasurer, Chair of Publicity; Chair of Hands Committee; Chair of Beautification Committee, and Parliamentarian from 2000-2017. 
• Projects: Durham Rescue Mission Garden (1987-88).

District 9 of GCNC

• Ruth Served as District Director; Chairman of Nominating Committee; and Civic Development Committee.

The Garden Club of North Carolina, Inc.

• 30th President (1983-85); Executive Committee Chair; Treasurer; Finance Chair, Board of Governors; Chairman of Trustees eight years; Chairman of Advisory Committee; Chair of Investment Committee; Scholarship Committee member, Chair of Legislation, and Parliamentarian for six years. She is also a Life Member of the organization.
• Winner of the Maslin Award for service in 1987.

South Atlantic Region (SAR) of National Garden Club

• Ruth served as Treasurer, Secretary, and is a Life Member.

National Garden Club

• Ruth was Executive Board Member, 1993 Annual Meeting Co-Chair and is a Life Member.

 

* The specific dates of some offices held are not available and many were concurrent.