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Back to Ruth: she wasn’t always a sweetie, however. As noted above, she was tough when toughness was demanded. A great example of this shows in the following snippet from her June 20, 1967 letter to dad that also tells about Tilly’s unexpected death. The background was that dad had become convinced that the national Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) had not only a duty, but a god-given obligation to take up the battle to protect all of the fossils in the United States of America, under the guise of the enforcement of the relevant portions of Antiquities Act.
Well, he ended up making this desire into a crusade, which was most unfortunate for various reasons. In the end, he hurt no one but himself and it was a mortal wound that he inflicted as far as vertebrate paleontology goes. His conviction and the attendant urgency that translated into hostile pressures on the SVP in their annual meetings antagonized so many members of the SVP that he ended up a pariah. Which was a shame because his initial work at Harvard with Dr. Romer, and his astonishing mount of Kronosaurus, had earned him a good reputation. Even Arnie Lewis and he had a falling out for a period of time. I don’t know the particular event that ruptured their ancient friendship but know it was so severe that when I dug Arnie up to tell him of dad’s death, expecting sympathy, his response was flat, uninterested. He wasn’t unpleasant to me, but it was crystal clear that he had not interest at the time in anything to do with dad. He actually said in his own words that he didn’t anything to do with dad, sort of shocking to hear.
I give you that brief history so that you have the context for this excerpt from Ruth’s letter which reveals the clarity with which she would talk when necessary. She was in tune with what was going on in the SVP through Al and through other friends. She knew the score. Dad obviously wrote her a letter whining about what was going on, about not being accepted or not being listened to by the SVP and complained that it was because he wasn’t educated. She knew dang well that the negative, even hostile responses, had little to do with his education, and a lot to do with his rudeness and his insecurity. So she talked to him, the only person in the VP world who could do it, in a way that called a spade a damned old shovel. It didn’t help, however, and he continued to burn his bridges, but not because no one called him to attention for his petulance.
 This was the same time that mom was waiting until dad had gone to work to go to the mailbox and remove his letters to SVP members. She’d carefully steam them open and read them to see what he had said. In cases where he was just too intemperate, she simply destroyed the letters and never told dad about doing this. Both Ruth and mom tried to help dad, to no avail.
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