Margaret Ruth Munson

     Margaret Ruth Munson was born on 28 September 1931.¹ She is the daughter of George Poindexter Munson Jr. and Eulalia Beatrice German. She married first Hugh Mangum circa 1960 in Houston, Harris County, Texas.² She and Hugh were divorced. She married second Drew Blackmore on 26 December 1976 in Fort Bend County, Texas.³
     
     Ruth lived most of her first few years with her Munson grandparents at Bailey's Prairie. She was a sickly baby, and her mother found it impossible to care for her because of a difficult second pregnancy and recovery following the birth of Ruth's sister Sara. Doctors feared Ruth would never be normal, but she thrived under the care of her grandmother Louise. Ruth's uncle, Joe Munson, remembered the trauma of returning Ruth to her parents' home in Caldwell. She was about three when Joe and Louise drove her, and he never forgot Ruth's screams for her "little grandmamma" as they pulled away. Louise said, "Keep on driving, Joe; just keep on driving."

     Sometime after September 1941, at which time Ruth's father was called to active duty, Eula Bee and the girls moved to East Columbia to live with George's aunt, Laura Underwood. Ruth and Sara attended West Columbia schools and graduated from West Columbia High School in the late 1940s.

     Ruth's artistic abilities surfaced early. Ruth Anna Munson remembered her, as a young child, drawing stick figures in perfectly accurate motion. However, her first love was perhaps ballet, and she studied at Sadler's Wells, London, and afterward was a member of the New York Ballet Company and the Houston Ballet Company. She taught ballet classes in Angleton for a period of time, the writer being an inept pupil for several years.

     Ruth turned more and more to fine art, and is a prominent figure in that community. Two of her portraits are hanging in the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and another in the National Gallery for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She has had eight one-artist exhibits, illustrated a book and painted President Bush's 2004 White House Holiday Invitation Card, and Governor Rick Perry's 2005 Holiday Card. In 1998 she got raves for her fabulous life-size, hand-painted, cutout figure of Nina Ananiashvili, prima ballerina with Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, who was in Houston to dance the lead role in The Snow Maiden. The figure adorned the dessert buffet table at the opening-night party. She has painted a number of prominent Texans including Nolan Ryan, Bob Bullock, and Academy Award winner Horton Foote. She currently lives in Houston and is (or was) a board member of the Houston Ballet. Ruth has no children.

     Visit Ruth Munson Portraits to read more about Ruth's accomplishments and view her paintings.