When my auntie Ruth entered the room there was no mistaking that a higher power was present. “Heeyy!! Sukie Sukie” now she’d holler like a wild woman. Then there’d be a mad rush to the bar as everybody wanted to be the first person to buy her a cold Bud Light.

I didn’t see Miss Ruth often but every time I did she’d hug me, squeeze my neck and say “how’s my favorite nephew doing baby?”

She was luminous.

Last Saturday Miss Ruth Banks passed away at the age of 69. Just the night before we were all sitting around at our neighborhood tavern and somebody wondered aloud where she’d been.

Ruth was a long-time member of the Money Wasters Social Aid and Pleasure Club. She did not roll with her crew in 2018 but was excited to get back out on the streets with them at their second line earlier this year.

“I don’t know how many more of these I got in me baby – I got to get back out there this year” Of course Ruth was the star of the show riding in the back of a fancy convertible and passing out extravagant party favors.

Wordsworth wrote a poem entitled ‘She Was A Phantom Of Delight’

She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleam’d upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as star of twilight fair;
Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

…is how the piece began and I can’t think of words that better describe the lovely Ruth Banks.

Rest in peace sweet soul