Ruby Lee (Trolinder) (Glenn) Bigelow
Aug 25, 1909 - Jul 29, 2006

© El Reno Tribune

02 Aug 2006

Submitted by:Ramona Boyton

Ruby Lee Trolinder Glenn Bigelow of Mustang passed from this life on July 29, 2006. She was born Aug. 25, 1909, in St. Joe, Texas, to John Luther Trolinder and Leona Mae (Garrison) Trolinder. At the age of 4 she lost her mother and baby brother and for the next two years she was boarded with various relatives. At the age of 6 she found her home with her aunt and uncle, Mae (Trolinder) and Walter Armstrong on their farm near Optima, Okla., where she graduated high school in 1927.

Ruby worked hard her whole life, first on the farm, then raising her first four children, Delton, Dorothy, LaQuita and Melton Glenn. During World War II, while living in California, she also worked on aircraft engines. Right after the war she started raising her second family in Nevada with three more children, Wil, Leona and Charles Bigelow, and three grandchildren.

In 1954 Ruby moved to El Reno with husband, Willard and four children, where she lived for the next 50 years.

Ruby’s passions were making quilts, gardening and reading. She moved to Mustang in 2000 when she could no longer live the independent life she so loved. Ruby was first and foremost a mother, wife and homemaker who instilled the love of reading in all of her children. Here was truly a woman with tenacity and determination. After surviving stomach cancer at age 80, her goal in life was to live to be 100. She survived a heart attack in early 2005 only to suffer a stroke later that spring.

Ruby was preceded in death by her parents; two husbands, Lemuel Glenn and Willard O. Bigelow Sr.; three children, Delton Glenn, Melton Glenn and Dorothy Glenn Lisik; a granddaughter, Amanda R. Bigelow Sr.; brothers, Charles and Robert Trolinder; and most recently her special cousin, Pauline Adams.

She is survived by daughters, Leona Benson and husband, Rollie of Mustang and LaQuita Thompson and husband, David of Calumet, and “adopted” daughter, Kathy Sexton of Yukon; sons, Wil Bigelow and wife, Joyce of Garden Grove, Calif., and Charles Bigelow and wife, Christy of Oklahoma City; and daughter-in-law, Vada Glenn of Minco. She is also survived by 26 grandchildren, 43 great-grand-children and six great-great-grandchildren; and loving cousins, Faye Wells of Hooker and Hazel McVey and Bonnie Horton of Wichita Falls, Texas.

Services were held Monday, July 31, 2006, in the Benson Memorial Chapel with burial in the family plot in the El Reno Cemetery. Services were under direction of Huber-Benson Funeral Home of El Reno.