Name: Terry Ruth.
What age are you? Currently I’m living in the Holocene-Quaternary Age, in the Cenozoic Era. It’s one of my favorites.
Job: Day job: shop instructor up at the Pen. Weekends: musician/DJ/Karaoke host!
What do you like about your job? It’s truly amazing seeing inmate students gradually acquire confidence, gain self-esteem, take pride in their achievements, and most of all, begin to realize that their ability to do these things in one area can realistically transfer to other pursuits in their lives. Many of these particular guys have never succeeded at anything academic, and it’s a privilege to be able to witness them doing so for the first time. Plus I have a really cool desk.
What do you like best about Drumheller? By far it’s the people who live here, and the fine circle of friends I’ve somehow managed to acquire! And there are wonderful opportunities for playing music here, as well.
If there were one thing you could change about Drumheller, what would it be? I love so many things about it here. But I’m puzzled by the annoyance some residents seem to express towards the tourists that choose our town as a destination; tourism contributes in a huge way to our local economy and to our unique Drumheller identity...as far as I can see, their presence here is a wonderful asset.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? You mean aside from Drumheller? Nowhere, unless I could take my friends with me.
Have you ever taken a life changing decision? Yes. To decide to ask a friend for guitar lessons when I was 19.
What do you do in your spare time? Spare time? What’s that?
Your life’s best achievement? Hmmm...I guess a highlight would be having one of my portrait drawings, of Albert Einstein, reproduced 9 feet tall on a wall of the Albert Einstein Memorial Museum in Austria, years ago.
What are your strengths? I’m blessed with the dual gifts of persistent optimism and unbounded curiosity.
Any weaknesses? I’m kind of an emotional softie...I don’t like confict...but my job up on the hill has really bolstered my ongoing resolution to overcome this.
What makes you happy? I really like making people feel good about themselves, even if it’s just for a moment in passing.
If you were granted three wishes from an angel or genie, what would they be? To invent a cheap household appliance to extract fuel-grade hydrogen from waste water. To make terrorism weapons suddenly acquire the density of a white dwarf star. Down to the core of the earth they go! To instantly raise every human’s I.Q. by 15 points. Some people could probably use 20.
If you could have one super power what would it be? Perpetual time travel, as a silent, invisible observer.
If you could travel back in time and meet yourself as a 10 year old kid, what advice would you give yourself? “Practice, practice, practice. And practice the hard stuff, not the easy stuff. And next time you’re tempted to climb really high on a really old rope... WALK AWAY!”
Words to live by? For years, my personal motto has been the Three L’s: “to Learn, to Love, and to Leave a Legacy”.
