When William Ruth sorted the morning mail at the Bohemia post office, he could not have known that his three daughters would one day carry the name of their small hamlet across the Pacific, into state government, and into classrooms and hospital wards from Rhode Island to Tennessee. Arline, Gladys, and Elaine Ruth — nurses, officers, mothers, teachers, and pioneers — lived lives so full of purpose that their story reads less like a family history than a portrait of the American century itself.
Growing Up in Bohemia
The sisters were born to William Ruth and Ruth Wilkinson, and community service ran in the family’s blood. William, the son of a Czech immigrant, worked alongside his own father in the family painting business before serving for many years as Bohemia’s postmaster — a post that made the Ruth household a fixture of hamlet life. The family were devoted members of St. John Nepomucene Church, where all three girls attended the parish school as honor students before continuing their education in the Sayville schools.
Arline, the eldest, was born in 1916; identical twins Gladys and Elaine followed in 1922. The twins later transferred to Seton Hall High School in Patchogue, while Arline charted her own course — a pattern of independence that would define her entire life.
Three Nurses, One Calling
After high school, all three sisters chose the same profession: nursing. Arline trained at the Mary Immaculate School of Nursing, while Gladys and Elaine earned their RN degrees together at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City.
When the Second World War came, all three sought to serve in the Army Nurse Corps. Arline, by then married and a mother, was unable to enlist. But Gladys and Elaine were commissioned as second lieutenants and shipped out to the South Pacific, where they cared for wounded soldiers in the Marianas Islands and, after the surrender, in occupied Japan. Both were awarded the Victory Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.
Elaine Ruth Ohlsen (1922–2007): A Life at the Bedside
Elaine was an honor student at every stage of her education, and after earning her RN at St. Vincent’s she worked at Central Islip Hospital before joining the Army Nurse Corps. When the war ended, she married Robert Ohlsen and raised two children — but she never set nursing aside. She devoted 35 years to the schoolchildren of the Providence, Rhode Island, School District, and even in retirement she kept working, serving as a camp nurse. When Elaine died in 2007 at age 85, she left behind a life spent, from beginning to end, in the care of others.
Gladys Ruth Kanter (1922–2006): From Field Hospitals to Yoga Mats
Gladys’s path mirrored her twin’s — Seton Hall, St. Vincent’s, the Army Nurse Corps, the South Pacific — until the war’s end sent the sisters in different directions. Gladys married Irving Kanter, and the two enrolled together at Boston University, where she earned a B.S. in Public Health while he completed a doctorate in physics. The couple raised five daughters as Irving’s career carried the family across the country, before they finally settled in Lexington, Massachusetts.
It was there that Gladys found her second calling. Decades before yoga studios appeared on every corner, she became a pioneer in the field, spending 30 years studying and teaching yoga and weaving holistic nutrition into her practice. She was still giving free yoga lessons when she passed away in 2006 at age 83 — a teacher of health and wellness to the very end.
Arline Ruth Kiven (1916–2008): The Trailblazer
Arline’s life was a study in reinvention. Fresh from Mary Immaculate with her nursing degree, she took to the skies as a stewardess for American Airlines — in an era when the job required nursing credentials. She married Dr. Nathan Kiven and settled in Rhode Island, where she met the greatest test of her life: the amputation of her leg due to cancer.
Undeterred, Arline went back to school, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Brown University. She became a college professor and then served five years in the Rhode Island State Legislature, where she championed fair housing, women’s rights, and environmental protection. After her husband’s death she moved to Colorado, where she tutored GED students and volunteered with Volunteers of America. She served her community until her passing in 2008, at age 92.
A Shared Legacy
From their roots in Bohemia, the Ruth sisters carried the values of their upbringing into every chapter of their extraordinary lives. As nurses, soldiers, mothers, activists, and educators, they touched countless lives across the country and around the world. Their story endures as a testament to the power of education, dedication, resilience — and above all, service.
Research provided by Thomas McMahon