An interview with Leo and Ruth King

Athletic Memories
     Leo and Ruth both laughed when asked how they met and told us this story. Ruth McClanahan was an eighth grade student in the Milan Elementary School when Leo King was taking teacher training classes and was sent to her class as a substitute teacher. That was when they met and that meeting and subsequent marriage has led to 69 years of married life, two children, Doug and Suzie, four grandsons and one great-grandson. Their family is central in their life and they very proudly shared pictures of them.
     Leo taught school for 39 years, teaching in a number of the small elementary schools and retiring from Milan High School. He started teaching in Boynton where he had gone to school. Ruth was also a teacher, but most of her teaching career was as a substitute primarily for Leo when he had something else to do for the day. They also managed a farm for a couple of years with 600 hundred head of cattle and a thousand ewes. They found themselves extremely busy "lambing out" all those ewes.
     Ruth attended Milan Elementary and High School and shared her third and eighth grade class pictures with us. Amazingly she can name all of the students in both class pictures.
     School has always been important to Leo and Ruth and both had favorite memories. Leo's was in 1939 when he was quarterback of the Milan High School football team. They always played Green City on Thanksgiving day and until that year Green City always won, but 1939 was different. Milan tied the game 6 to 6. In those days there was no overtime so the game went into the record books as a "tie game". After the game they celebrated with a big Thanksgiving dinner at one of the churches in Green City. Leo still has his souvenir program for that day and it shows their celebration dinner cost 50 cents. Leo wore his High School sweater when he and Ruth were Grand Marshall's of the old Timers day parade in 2002.
     Ruth shared a couple of favorite memories. One was playing basketball at Milan High School 1931-32. They played 16 games and won them all. Her other favorite memory also involved basketball but instead of the game itself this one involved their uniforms. "I remember when we first got out basketball uniforms and got out of those bloomers. O' we were so thrilled we all went up to the square and walked around the square two or three times to show of our new outfits." Ruth admitted that she does still have those "awful bloomers" but her class sweater is long gone.
     Another childhood memory that Ruth shared was of the band concerts on the square when she was about 10 years old. Her father played with the Milan band and after the concerts the drugstore always gave the band members ice cream or something to drink. Ruth said she made sure she always got on the bandstand by the end of the last number so she could get some ice-cream.
     When asked about their favorite foods, Leo said his favorite was seafood, and Ruth chimed in "it's McDonalds seafood sandwich, but with McDonald's gone he has to do something else." Leo continued that it is SEE food "when I see food, I eat it." Ruth agreed that is her favorite too. This took their memories to pie suppers also known as box socials. They talked about how the boxes were decorated by the ladies and filled with food, pies, chicken, sandwiches, and the box that was the prettiest would bring the most money even if the food was not the best. They then admitted that their favorite pie is much like their favorite food. They both agreed it is hot or cold, but it came down to Leo's favorite being Lemon and Ruth's Coconut or Raisin.
     Leo sees the future of Milan as "looks pretty blue, if we get the dam through and if we get water I think Milan will grown". He went on to say that he thinks some company will be the Con-Agra plant and open it and with the new sausage contract at PSF the future could be good. "We can't go much lower down, we've got to go up". He sees the biggest change in Milan for the bad as Con-Agra's closing and for the good as PSF coming in. They both concluded, "There is no place like Milan".
     We thank Leo and Ruth for a laughter and joy filled afternoon and for sharing their memories with us.