The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • Memorial Tattoo for Rocky

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    Ruth Carter

    Rocky Kees (December 20, 1949 - August 14, 2013)
    Rocky Kees (December 20, 1949 – August 14, 2013)

    As you know, my gymnastics coach and mentor of 24 years – Rocky – died earlier this year. Shortly after he passed away, I started thinking about whether I wanted to get a memorial tattoo in his honor. Surprisingly, I’m still leaning towards “no,” but I’m entertaining the thought process.

    I had a conversation with Rocky’s daughter and my teammates about some of the imagery that we associate with Rocky. This list we came up with definitely showed what a unique and special guy he was:

    • Leg warmers (that he would wear over his sweatpants)
    • Coffee in his left hand, cigarette in his right
    • Baby duck (his nickname for a lot of us)
    • Altoids (that he would eat 6 at a time)
    • Dancing – he was always dancing

    And there are the great lines he gave us:

    • “Get a helmet.”
    • “Turn the page.”
    • “It’s only hard.”
    • “Do what you know how to do.”

    The hard thing about picking a tattoo is it’s challenging to capture a feeling in an image. What I loved most about Rocky wasn’t the way he looked like or what he said, but how I felt when I was around him. He knew how to make everyone feel special. When you were talking with him, you knew that he genuinely cared about how the topic affected you. We talked for hours and I always felt that unconditional positive regard from him. How do I put that into a tattoo?

    I recently saw a video from best-selling sci-fi author Scott Sigler. He’s an incredible guy with a loyal fan base (called Junkies). These guys love his work so much they get tattoos of images from his book. (If you get a Sigler tattoo, he’ll write you into one of his books.) Two of his fans have had Scott sign their skin with a Sharpie and they immediately got it tattooed into their bodies. It’s pretty cool actually.

    Rocky SignatureThis got me thinking – I have Rocky’s signature. My gym did a big annual show and I had my coaches and teammates sign my program each year. I could, if I wanted a memorial tattoo, get his signature inked into my skin. He had such a profound influence on my life that it would be an appropriate way to honor him. Like an artist gets to sign their paintings, it wouldn’t be weird to say Rocky get to claim his impact on me, and so many other people.

    So where would I put it? Probably on the back of my left leg, just above my ankle. Rocky always had my back and usually stood just over my left shoulder so it would be sweet to put his name on my left side.

    I would probably add “1949-2013” beneath it so anyone who saw it would know it’s a memorial tattoo, not a love interest. We’ll see if I get the sign that I’m supposed to get this.

  • In Memoriam: Rocky Kees (1949-2013)

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    Ruth Carter

    I want my friends in my life. Because someday we’re gonna wake up, and we’re gonna find that someone is missing from this circle. And on that day, we’re gonna mourn. And we shouldn’t have to mourn alone.

    -Chief Miles O’Brien from “The Sound of Her Voice,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

    That day I’ve been dreading has come – Rocky Kees – my gymnastics coach, mentor, and friend of 24 years passed away last week. He was an absolutely incredible person who brought out the best in everyone around him. Rocky made your feel special and respected in every situation (which is an incredible gift when you work with teenage girls). He was the kind of guy you could hang out with for hours and just listen to him tell stories.

    Rocky Kees (December 20, 1949 - August 14, 2013)
    Rocky Kees
    (December 20, 1949 – August 14, 2013)

    Rocky scared me when I first met him. He was tall with long thin limbs but his bicep bulged out like a softball when he flexed. He had sunken eyes and thick glasses that made him pretty foreboding to 10 year-old me. And he pushed us to our limits – in a lovingly way. I never trained harder than when I was with Rocky. At first I hated it but I came to love it. He brought out the best in us and there was an incredible sense of security when it came to working with him. If he said you could do something, you knew you could do it. He had a wonderful calming effect on me.

    For years, if you were looking for me, the best course of action was to scan the room for him, go over about two feet and look down. That’s where you’d usually find me. At the end of practice every night, Rocky was usually outside chatting with parents with his coffee in his left hand and a cigarette in his right. I liked to pad outside, velcro myself to his left side (so he wouldn’t ash on me), and wrap my arms around his middle. He would look down to make sure it was me but keep talking without breaking his cadence. When there was a natural break in the conversation he’d look down and say something like “How’s it going Baby Duck?”

    He called lots of us “Baby Duck” (apparently it’s a movie reference) but it was fitting for me. I followed him around constantly, happy to share his company and glean whatever gems I could from him. Rocky shared so many lessons that applied to life as much as to gymnastics. Here are some of the ones that have been going through my mind for the last few days.

    • Life’s tough. Get a helmet.
    • Dump the cement bag and climb the ladder. (Translation: don’t make things harder than they need to be.)
    • Do what you know how to do.

    There are so many Rocky lessons I use in my everyday life. They’ve gotten me through law school, training for half marathons, and challenges in my professional and personal life. In so many ways he’s become the voice in my head, always guiding me in the right direction. Even when he wasn’t physically with me, he was still there.

    Since his passing, it’s been wonderful to connect with my gymnastics coaches and teammates to share pictures and memories. The world lost an amazing person and we were the lucky ones who got to know him.

  • Why I Love Deadliest Catch

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    Ruth Carter

    The ninth season of Deadliest Catch starts tonight!

    I don’t have much time to watch TV, but this show is a staple on my calendar and the only one I make it a priority to watch.

    I’m not a fan of fabricated reality shows – things like The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars, The Real World, and anything involving the Kardashians where we’re watching real people but it’s anything but real life. These people are in irrelevant competitions and you can tell a lot of them are hoping to become famous for doing nothing or get their own show out of the deal.

    Me with Captain Keith - Summer 2011
    Me with Captain Keith – Summer 2011

    Deadliest Catch has real people doing their real jobs fishing on the Bering Sea. They don’t need to fabricate drama because the risk that every day you could die is drama enough. The relationships between the people real, which I think makes for much better TV because we actually care what happens in their lives. And according to the reports, everyone acts the same on camera as they do off camera. They’re there to do a job first, not create good TV. (That comes in the editing.) Apparently there’s at least one guy we almost never see on the show because everything he says contains profanity.

    I love watching the captains on all the boats, well except Captain Elliott. They’re hard asses when it comes to pushing their crews, but these big strong (sometimes scary-looking) guys each have a compassionate side. We’ve seen them all shed tears when another boat is in trouble or loses a crew member and they feel guilty when a guy gets hurt under their watch.

    And I love that they’re real people. I follow a lot of the captains on Twitter and I saw a panel at SXSW that featured Captain Sig, Captain Keith, and Captain Jonathan talking about how they use Twitter. (Captain Andy was still fishing.) I also got to the hotel before their panel and invaded their coffee time on the patio next to the hotel. They were totally sweet and let me sit with them for a few minutes. I thought about asking them for a picture, but I wanted to treat them like normal people too and respect their down time.

    Captain Sig was the best during the panel. His first tweet was “Twitter rhymes with shitter.” He also said that when he gets home from being on the Bering Sea for months he doesn’t want to tweet, “I want to screw my wife.” They all do a good job of interacting with their fans online and letting us be part of their lives. It was fun when Captain Keith was getting his boat ready for crab season and tweeted a picture of the receipt from Costco and let fans guess how much it was.

    SXSW was the second time I got to meet Captain Keith. The first time was an appearance he did in Phoenix two summers ago. Props to him for coming to Arizona in the middle of the summer. He was a total sweetheart and signed an autograph for me and one for my friend Stacee who was serving in Afghanistan at the time. I lived with her during my 1L summer with the JAG; we watched a lot of Deadliest Catch because we were living in the middle of nowhere.

    I’m looking forward to the new season of Deadliest Catch. For one hour a week I get to feel a sliver of the exhilaration and exhaustion that comes with working on the Bering Sea.  I will definitely have that time blocked on my calendar so I can be sure to see each episode when it debuts if I don’t have other obligations.

    Every so often I think it might be fun to be a deckhand for a season, but then I remember that I’m freezing when the temperature drops before 70 degrees, I’m so accident prone I’d be injured the first day, and I’m so small they’d have to put a leash on me to make sure I didn’t blow overboard. Maybe I’m better suited to work on a boat in the summer.