Eva Rutland’s daughter Ginger Rutland turned her mother’s book into a play. She took the book to the modern era with the Ginger character going to college, becoming a black radical and later marrying a white man and having her daughter “Little Eva.”
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Two of grandma’s stories are available on smashwords
We posted two chapters of her upcoming book “The Trouble With Being a Grandma.” The books are pay what you want so check them out!
Grandma on NPR when we first republished
She looked Alex Chadwick, the host, straight in the eye and said “Are you handsome you sound handsome.” When the host mentioned that he told his wife about grandma and his wife was jealous she said “She should me. I’m going to steal you away.” She was 90-years-old.
Eva Fields’s obituary for Eva Rutland for the Curtis Park Viewpoint
My grandma Eva Rutland passed away March 15th, 2012. She was 95. I had hoped she would live to be 100 but when I mentioned this to her she would crinkle her nose and declare “Can you imagine anything so horrible?” She was ready to go.
To say she lived an amazing life is an understatement. A granddaughters of former slaves, she was born January 15th, 1917 in Atlanta, GA. Despite discrimination she had a happy childhood. Five years ago, I traveled with her toAtlantafor her 70th reunion fromSpelmanCollege. She was 90 and her childhood friend was there. They chatted like teenagers about old friends and boyfriends. One of her old boyfriends was across the street at Morehouse, the men’s college and he called her. At 90, we all said “grandma’s still got it.”
In 1943 she married Bill Rutland, a civilian employee at the Tuskegee Army Air Base, where black pilots were trained for combat for the first time.
She and Bill moved to the Curtis Park neighborhood inSacramento,CAin 1952. Eva was already published articles in the leading women’s magazine’s of the day, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal and Women’s Day, not bad for a black woman in the 1940s and early 50s.
She grew up in the segregated South and loved it. She worried about her children who would have to interact with whites in the integrating West of the 1950s and 1960s. Eva started writing stories about her children to tell white mothers, “My children are just as precious and just as fragile as yours. Please be kind to them.” She compiled these stories into a book entitled The Trouble With Being a Mama, published in 1964.
When she was in her early 50s, grandma went blind but she didn’t let that slow her down. She bought a talking computer and became one of Harlequin’s most prolific writers, eventually writing over 20 books for the well-known romance publisher.
Still with all that, I never realized how amazing she was until I was 20-years-old and our family republished The Trouble With Being a Mama under the new title When We Were Colored, a Mother’s Story. Grandma went blind before I was born and I never even thought about it until I saw how much she struggled to find her way around the house and to write. I had never thought how much the tracheotomy tube in her throat, which was the result of a botched operation in a segregated hospital in the 1940s, bothered her. She had to cover the hole to speak and uncover it to breath. In later life it made her cough all day and all night.
My mother and I traveled across the country with grandma to promote her book. Grandma was always the quintessential Southern belle. Watching her, I became a “born again grandma worshipper.” I know it was time but it was still too soon for me. I love and miss you grandma. My mother and I are continuing her legacy. We are putting together her final book the Trouble With Being a Grandma and adapting When We Were Colored into a play.
Eva Rutland obituary from the Sacramento Bee
95-year-old author, mother and “fairy godmother” Eva Rutland has passed away
Eva Rutland passed away this morning at 2AM at the age of 95. She was ready to go and she has had such a wonderful life. Still, I was not ready to lose her. I don’t think I could ever be ready but I am happy she’s not in pain anymore. She is with grandpa and her beloved parents and cousins and I hope they understand what a special person they have. Grandma I love you.
My mother Ginger Rutland and I are continuing grandma’s legacy. We are putting the final touches on her final book “the Trouble With Being a Grandma” and adapting “When We Were Colored” into a play.
Eva Fields (Little Eva)
Women of substance Three generations of Sacramento women describe their family’s journey from slavery to the middle-class life of American blacks
Elk Grove Library Book Event
The Long Goodbye
My grandma’s mind is fuzzy. Doctors call it dementia but I call it the fuzziness that comes and goes. She can be completely lucid one minute and yelling that the caregivers are stealing her denture cream the next. We put the cream in her hand but she can’t see and can’t hear so she continues to complain that “They’re stealing it.”
She has a new tracheotomy tube and can’t remember what it is so she keeps trying to pull it out. We have been to the hospital twice in the last week trying to get it back in. She has had the tube for 64 years, since she was pregnant with my mom and her twin Patty-Jo but she can’t remember it’s there.
She brightens up for book events, when she’s physically capable of going. She loves to meet fans and have people tell her how great she is. I live for the smile she gets when she talks to the audience about her past. She brightens up and becomes the Southern belle that everyone loves.
Posted by “Little” Eva (Eva Rutland’s granddaughter)
Eva Rutland 