RUTH LIVINGSTON
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The late Mrs. Ruth Livingston, who served on the Pasco school board from 1926 to 1951, when she retired to become county auditor, recalled that one of her brightest memories of her 25 years as a member and clerk of the board is the wholehearted support of the schools by the taxpayers. She added that never once during that quarter of a century did the citizens of the community balk nor did they grumble about high taxes, if the levies were for schools. She was appointed to the board in 1926 to fill an unexpired term, and then she was elected. From 1929 until her resignation in 1951, she served as clerk of the board. Her oft-stated philosophy was that schools should fit the children for life, and that an education should be available to all. Appropriately enough, a new elementary school now being built on Livingston Road west of Pasco is to be named in her honor, at the recommendation of the Pasco-Kennewick Chapter of the A.A.U.W., the Franklin County Historical Society, of which groups she was a charter member, and by C.L. Booth, former school superintendent at Pasco, and by others. The school is scheduled to be opened in September, 1978.
“My introduction to the Pasco school bus situation came soon after my arrival as a bride in 1911,” Mrs. Livingston wrote in her “Recollections About Pasco Schools” in the January 1969, FRANKLIN FLYER. “Early one morning I was thrilled by the sight of a real covered wagon slowly crawling across the prairies toward the school building. Now I am in the real west, the land of pioneers, I thought. But a neighbor spoiled my joy by remarking, “Oh, that’s just the school bus.’ The ‘buses’ were horse-drawn buggies covered with canvas.”
