TU, Goucher Remember Ms. Ruby Johnson

Press release from Goucher College:

July 14, 2020

Ruby Johnson greeted everyone she knew at Goucher with a friendly, “Hey baby, how
you doin’?” It’s how the Goucher community will remember Johnson—always smiling, often
teasing, and sometimes scolding students like family. Johnson died May 15, 2020, a
loss felt deeply on campus and beyond.

She was part of Goucher’s Facilities Management staff for nearly 10 years, working
as an environmental technician. Born July 15, 1951, in Baltimore, Johnson, 68, was
a mother of three, grandmother of six, great-grandmother of four, and great-great-grandmother
of one.

To students, faculty, and staff, she was Ruby or Ms. Ruby. The Goucher community knew
her as a vibrant and straightforward person. There wasn’t one story, one joke, or
one piece of advice that made Johnson the person everyone loved, says Emma Halterman ’19, which is why she wanted her fellow Goucher students to honor Johnson together. Halterman
reached out to Johnson’s family to create a GoFundMe account for her funeral expenses.
In several weeks, the community raised $6,200, surpassing the goal of $5,000. Additionally,
many students attended Johnson’s memorial service and wrote notes about Johnson on
the GoFundMe page.

“She was like having your own personal aunt on campus who would check on you whenever
she saw you,” says Cydnii Jones ’19. “And being a Black student on a mostly White campus, I didn’t see a lot of people
who reminded me of home. Ms. Ruby was that piece of home for me and a lot of my friends
on campus.”

Jones adds that the cleaning staff, who are disproportionally Black and Brown compared
to the rest of the campus, gave Jones a sense of community. “It’s good to see that
representation, no matter how small,” Jones says. “It just makes you feel like you’re
not alone and that somebody like you sees you and understands you.”

For Nadiera Young ’12, Johnson was always there to remind her why she was at Goucher in the first place.
“She was like a little motivational speaker on your way to class,” says Young. “But
she was also real, you know? She told you how it was. But everything she said was
always filled with love.”

“‘How are y’all today,” Ms. Ruby would always ask, and sometimes, Young says, she
just needed to tell someone about her day, “like a mom away from home.” Then they’d
be laughing, and she’d realize, “Oh, that just made me feel good, that was a great
moment in my day.”

When Johnson asked how you were, you knew she wanted the real answer and not a generic
response, says Adam Jones ’20 (no relation to Cydnii). He struggled with a personal matter in his senior year,
and he started talking about it with Johnson. She told him to call his family because
they knew him better than anyone else did. Of course, he listened to her advice, and
it worked.

“She was just there for me, and it was always at the most random times,” he says.
He would start talking with Johnson, and her kindness and advice would be exactly
what he needed.

Sometimes, what Cydnii Jones needed was a good laugh. That’s what she/they remembers
most, just laughing at Johnson’s jokes. She would call out Jones and her friends for
messing around in the hallways, always assuming they were up to something, which wasn’t
too far from the truth.

Johnson was always telling Jones’ friend to fix her hair, calling her “crazy girl,”
Jones says, laughing at the memory. Halterman also remembers Johnson scolding her
and her friends, usually for not wearing shoes in the hallway.

“I really do think that she made it a part of her mission to do the hard work with
people and really just love on people and encourage them,” Young says. “Even if it
was something small, like a ‘hello’ or ‘how are you doing,’ she just made sure that
you as a person, as a student, felt like you mattered. That was Ms. Ruby.”

This press release was produced by Goucher College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.