A guru in Texas Women’s History: Ruthe Winegarten
Texas Strong Women? You could have asked Ruthe Winegarten!
Belle of Steel #25
8-25-2026
August 26, 1929 – June 14, 2004
Ruthe Lewin Winegarten, was born in 1929 to two Jewish parents, Charles and Celia (Cohen) Lewin in Dallas, Texas. She gave birth to three children. Within her professional career, she was resiliently successful. Her personal life was colorful. She married four times. Ruthe had a total of three children: Martha Frances (Addington / Wilson), (1952–2007); Marc David Sanders (1954–2022); and Debra Lou Winegarten (1957–2018). One preceded her in death.
(Photo courtesy of Women in Texas History)
Ruthe developed a passion for activism while very young. One of her earliest influencing groups was Habonin (which mean “the builders”) an organized Labor Zionist youth group founded by Jacob Levin. Leven was the principal at Hebrew School of Dallas. Historian Nancy Baker Jones believes the Habonin group and its affiliated Camp Bonim served as the “crucible in which her social conscience formed, forging her ethnic identity.” Those influences challenged Ruthe causing development of an ethical life devoted to advocacy (Jones, 2012). Initially, Ruthe enrolled at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. But she transferred to the more progressive University of Texas at Austin where completed a degree in anthropology. She went on to pursue a graduate degree, a PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas, she abandoned graduate school to directly contribute to the growing field of women’s history. Exploring them was her passion.
Ruthe married Alvin Winegarten, an aeronautical engineer in 1956. She spent the 1960s in a variety of voluntary civic organizations, helping to organize the North Dallas Democratic Women’s Club in support of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. That was where she met the future governor of Texas, Ann Richards. Ann was very politically active and the wife of a Dallas attorney. Ruthe loved her unconventional, loud, outspoken personality. Together, as a fundraiser the group performed yearly musical skits, which they called Political Paranoia. These skits depicted satires of well-known political candidates and office holders. Riotous, they thrilled and motivated sponsors with irreverent lyrics set to popular tunes (Baker, 2012).
In 1970, Ruthe completed her Master of Science degree specializing in social work from the University of Texas at Arlington. During this decade, Ruthe was very active in social justice Jewish organizations. With her natural leadership skills, she became Southwest Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. It was during this time, that Ruthe began publishing profiles about women for the Texas Jewish Post.
During the year 1976, Ruthe began the PhD program in School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. However, she left that program after two years; motivated to contribute more directly to the growing field of women’s history. Ruthe wanted to work more on the oral histories of women which fueled her creativity. She wanted to make a difference. A friend of Ruthe’s since the 1970s, and one of her co-authors, Janice Cohen states “She would tell the most amazing stories, and it would just suck you in.” (Pyle, 2004).
Always striving to advocate, Ruthe Collaborated with writer Werden and Janet G. Humphrey, Ruthe to complete and publish Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph in 1995. Up to that point, almost zero publications highlighted the strength and resilience of Black women in Texas. During that same year, Ruthe co-authored Deep in the Heart of Texas: the Lives & Legends of Texas Jews with Cathyn Schecter.
Next came Capitol Women: Texas Female Legislators, 1923-1999 (2000) and Las Tejanas: 300 years of History co-authored with Nancy Jane Baker in 2003 (the first history of Mexican descent women in Texas ever written). Winegarten then curated and researched three major history exhibits about Texas Women. She served as a consultant on women’s history for the Handbook of Texas. Then as nascent for Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Ruthe directed the Texas Jewish Historical Society and served on the Texas Governor’s Commission for Women (Baker, 2012).
In 2003, Ruthe was nominated and named a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Society where she won the Liz Carpenter Award and the T.R. Fehrenbach Award twice. Ruthe was a public speak throughout the state of Texas. Composer Naomi Carrier and Ruthe worked together to turn her oral history of Annie Mae Hunt into a popular musical, I am Annie Mae. What an amazing legacy of advocacy and publications on social justice leaves behind. Historians and people in Texas for decades will remember her work.
Tragically, in 2004, Ruthe was diagnosed with early vascular dementia. Her daughter, Debra Winegarten, a published writer herself, reveled that her mother could not stand the thought of losing her mind. Ruthe Winegarten was brilliant. As such on June 14, while living in assisted living, Ruthe Winegarten chose to end her own life (Baker, 2012). Her family was devastated, but not surprised. Ruthe had always done everything her own way (Winegarten, 2001).
Ruthe Winegarten spoke in a Texas drawl, especially when she was proud of you, state some of her friends. Her daughter Debra said of her mother “She would feed you, comfort you, and then she would kick your ass and make you finish what you were working on (Pyle, 2004). In 2012, Debra Winegarten introduced the work of her mother to the author at a Lexicon Writer’s Conference. Sadly, just a few years later, Debra also passed away 2018. In her obituary her friends and partner described her as a “joyful, generous, rabble-rousing feminist who delighted in inspiring and challenging others (The Dallas Morning News, 2018). Having met Debra, it felt like she inherited some of the traits of her illustrious mother. In 2007, several of Ruthe’s colleagues established the Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation for Texas Women’s History. It is now a website womeninhistory.org which continues Ruthe’s work (Baker, 2012).
For her supreme advocacy all women, her civic pride, her sheer determination and grit, AgeView Press is proud to honor the legacy and the life of Ruthe Lewin Winegarten as Belle of Steel # 25.