Spirited Sisters

About the Book

Spirited Sisters captures six generations of family stories. These spirited women form a family heritage for the current generation’s identity. Daunting tales of escape introduce Babka, a young Polish Jewess. Though she was spirited, Babka was challenged when her youngest daughter, Bernice, converted to Pentecostalism and joined the love of her life in South India. Next, additional Grandmom’s lives add insights from the Western prairie and in the Oklahoma Territory. They share how the Scotts treasured their families as well as human rights. Amanda and her daughter Lenora provide a sequel to Ruth Byrd Barnett and Freddie Estelle, who are both from old English stock. Pentecostal fervor revivals prompted Estelle to work in Maharastra, India, while Ruth Barnett supported abolishment of racial bigotry and supported women’s voting rights in the United States. The next generation brought Ruth Burgess and Helen Sullivan, Estelle’s daughters, into lives intermingled with cultural diversity between western and eastern ways of living with diverse challenges. Spirited Sisters chronologies how these spirited women have diversely and often creatively dealt with change and continuity.

About the Author

The monsoon was ending, and the monkeys were migrating northward when Ruth Lenora Vassar was born to Ted and Estelle Vassar. Poona, India, was their new home eight thousand miles from the red dirt of North Texas and the rolling Osage Hills of Oklahoma. World War II and health concerns required this family to remain in the States until 1947 when they returned to India. Most of the Vassar family remained on the Deccan Plateau, except for Ruth who went to Highclerc, an American boarding school in Kodaikanal, South India. There she met Stanley Burgess, who would become her husband twelve years later. To this union was born five children (John Bradley, Stanley Matthew, Scott Vassar, Heidi Amanda Elizabeth, and Justin David). Education goals were attained as the couple earned doctoral degrees at the University of Missouri–Columbia, Missouri. Ruth is currently professor emeritus in Missouri State University. Ruth’s mission has been to work on issues of social justice and to preserve family heritage for future generations. It is through these wisdom principles one can educe transcendent values that will highlight individual and group identities. Through Spirited Sisters, one reads of six generations of women who formed the current generation’s identity.