Ruth Matthews White (1922-2003), of Greensboro, North Carolina, served in the American Red Cross from 1945 to 1947. Ruth Matthews White grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and graduated in 1939 from Greensboro High School. She briefly worked at Belk’s Department Store, then studied physical education at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), graduating in 1943. She then got a job teaching Physical Education and the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In April 1945 White joined the Red Cross to work in troop recreation. In July, she went to two weeks of training in Washington, D.C., and then two weeks of service club training at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia. She was then sent to Camp Stoneman, California, for departure to Manila, Philippines, where she opened a Red Cross club. In November 1945, White volunteered to go to Okinawa, Japan. There she help set up a Red Cross club at the naval operating base (NOB) at Buckner Bay, and then six months later, in the summer of 1946, she moved to the air force’s Club Doolittle, also on Okinawa, near Kadena. After suffering two severe cases of pneumonia, White resigned from the Red Cross in the summer of 1947. She returned to North Carolina and started Camp Awaniko (Okinawa spelled backwards) in the Swannanoa Valley near Asheville, North Carolina, with her Red Cross colleague and life companion Nancy Wrenn. Ruth White died in November 2003.
