Ellie Chavez and Ruth Waldron's Partnership

Ellie Chavez and Ruth Waldron’s partnership began with an act of welcome and endured across decades, joining private love to the practical work of sheltering and raising children. Their shared life offered Ellie and her family stability in Tempe, even as the social and legal pressures of the time shaped what they could safely claim in public.

Meeting and Shared Exile

Ellie arrived in Tempe with her children after a difficult journey delayed by a car that would not start and rain that made the washes between Quijotoa and Casa Grande impassable. Ruth, a friend of Sister Justine, came out to greet them at her small frame house. She welcomed Ellie by name, then addressed Delia at her eye level and asked after Eddie, who had fallen asleep in the car. Supper was waiting; the family could bring in their suitcases when the rain let up.

Years later, Delia understood that Ellie and Ruth had been lovers almost from the beginning, from the night Ruth took the family in. Their histories gave the relationship a shared point of recognition: Ellie was an exile from the reservation, while Ruth was a former Benedictine nun separated from her convent and disapproved of by her old Boston family. Their partnership began not as an abstract declaration but within the immediate circumstances of refuge and welcome.

Raising Delia and Eddie in Tempe

Ellie had expected to stay with Ruth for only one night. Instead, she and the children remained for four years, for as long as Ellie was enrolled in the undergraduate program at ASU. Ruth worked as a physical education teacher at two Tempe elementary schools and became a surrogate mother to Delia and Eddie while Ellie studied. She took the children to ball games, the zoo, and the Arizona State Fair, helped with homework, and attended PTA meetings when Ellie could not.

Ruth’s care also helped Delia find her footing at school. Initially placed with slower students and largely ignored, Delia was far behind her classmates. With her own abilities and Ruth’s nightly tutoring, she soon rose to the top. The household’s stability thus had consequences beyond the immediate shelter it provided: Ruth’s sustained attention helped Delia thrive while Ellie pursued her education.

Family Pressure and the Cost of Secrecy

The limits imposed on the relationship became clearest when Manuel Chavez came to Tempe and took Eddie back to the reservation. At twelve, Delia could only wonder why her father had collected her brother, who had repeated kindergarten, but not her, a straight-A student. She did not yet understand the pressures that Ellie faced or the relationship between her mother and Ruth.

Later, while in law school, Delia understood that Ellie’s position had been precarious. Lesbian mothers had no rights in those days, and resisting Manuel’s demand for Eddie could have put both children at risk rather than only one. A legal dispute might also have threatened Ellie’s postgraduate fellowship, while public exposure could have damaged Ruth’s career in the Tempe public schools. Their relationship endured, but the choices around the family were constrained by the danger that law and public prejudice posed to both women and their work.

A Partnership That Endured

Despite separation and the demands of their careers, Ellie and Ruth remained together. For years Ruth spent summer vacations with Ellie and Delia wherever they were. After Ruth retired, she and Ellie lived together in a small house she had inherited just outside Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ellie went on to earn a Ph.D. in education, serve for a long period with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and become a sought-after consultant in American Indian education. She never returned to Sells after leaving the reservation on that rainy August day. Her and Ruth’s lasting partnership therefore stands alongside a consequential departure: the life they built together continued, even though Ellie’s relationship to her former home remained marked by permanent absence.