Ruth Heimburg passed away peacefully in her sleep Sunday morning February 21, 2021 after a full, challenging, and rewarding life. She was born in Darmstadt, Germany on July 29, 1924 to Charlotte Reichert and Friedrich Holtz. As daughter of the city architect, she had a happy early childhood followed by very tough wartime teenage years. Most fundamentally, she was a scarred survivor of the September 1944 fire-bombing of Darmstadt when she was 20 years old.
Her mother and mother-in-law were very friendly neighbors who “collaborated” to see her married to Karl Heimburg, one of a group of German rocket engineers brought to the US as POWs by the US Army after World War II. So, at 24 she came to the US to start married life in the barracks at Fort Bliss, Texas. With the rocket team she and Karl moved to much greener Huntsville, Alabama in 1950.
She became the Mom of Klaus (1949), Ruth (1951), and Stephan (1961) Heimburg, and surely set some kind of Randolph School carpool driving record (1959-1978). The chatter from the backseat on those rides were her real baptism into American language and culture. She was always the quintessential homemaker and most definitely the sweet part of the Heimburg parenting team.
Always too modest about her cooking skills, she was the maker of the best German Christmas cookies, herring salad, and beef rouladen in all North Alabama. With our neighbor Ruth Hueter, she made rotkohl part of the Southern Thanksgiving culinary tradition. But never a squash, okra, turnip green, or sweet potato ever saw her kitchen.
After the kids were out of the house, she enjoyed a whole series of hobbies: rug making, landscape painting, collecting oriental rugs, and listening to classical music. Sadly, her husband passed away in 1997, but this opened a whole new phase of life for her, the first time in her life that she did not have caregiver responsibilities. During this time she thrived on friendships with the young people that lived in the neighborhood during its transition/gentrification years. The unexpected death of her daughter Ruth in 2016 was heartbreaking for her.
She is the proud and much admired Grandmother of Lauren Heimburg, 31, Annandale, VA, Stephanie Heimburg, 29, Washington, DC, Calvin Heimburg, 25, Safety Harbor, FL and Zoe Heimburg, 20, Gainesville, FL, all of them successful in their professions, studies, and lives. She is also survived by her sister Iris Holtz-Eberle of Darmstadt, Germany.
She led a long and eventful life: 24 years youth, 30 years parenting, 18 years empty-nester, 24 years widow, a 68-year resident of the same house on Sauerkraut Hill in Blossomwood.
An On-Line Celebration of Ruth Heimburg’s Life
In her last 24 years she made many new friends, most of whom don’t know each other, many of whom don’t live in Huntsville anymore. We, Stephan and Klaus, her surviving kids, don’t know many of you. We have relatives in far away Germany who can’t just come here. Because you all are so geographically spread out, because we still have Covid to worry about, and because the shy ones among you (just like Ruth) would never say anything at a memorial service, we want to celebrate her life by collecting your reminiscences in one place where you can all read them.
We invite you, her surviving friends, to share your favorite Ruth Heimburg stories using the Laughlin Service website. Contribute anything at all: something you enjoyed about her, learned from her, something funny or smart that she said, something that you will remember about her. Each of you know a facet of Ruth that the rest of us probably don’t. Hopefully by sharing our stories we can stitch together a full and entertaining picture. If you know somebody else that knew her, send them a link to the Laughlin website and encourage them to contribute!
Your stories will mean a lot to all of us. Yes, you are sharing your story with people that you may not know, but they are people who know the same Ruth Heimburg you do, and they are also sharing their stories. It is a friendly and joyful way of celebrating her life.
We look forward to reading your stories. Happy reminiscing.
