Synopsis Finding Baby Ruth

Baby Ruth was meant to be forgotten. When she was born out-of-wedlock on March 6, 1922, her mother was advised to put “the incident” out of her mind and her father already had. The baby was surreptitiously swept away and given up for adoption. Life stuttered forward because it was too short to be put on hold.  Baby Ruth was born at a time when people barely out of their teens were dying in the War to End All Wars and the Spanish flu epidemic. Life was so tenuous an occasional indulgence was to be expected. It was now or, maybe, never.

Young people consumed moonshine and, if they could afford them, cigarettes already rolled. They listened to lusty jazz music and baseball games on “radio boxes,” which their elders predicted would herald the end of books. They ate a lot of candy. For a time, more than five million of the new Baby Ruth candy bars were sold every day. People had sex in cars that a couple of years earlier, few of them could have afforded. They had illegitimate babies. The standing president, Warren Harding; the former president, Grover Cleveland; and Babe Ruth, the baseball player whom half the nation wished was president; were all rumored to have illegitimate children.

Baby Ruth’s parents weren’t famous. She was born after a few moments of passion one sultry evening in the back seat of a Model T. Her father was obsessed with cars, Baby Ruth bars, and the ballplayer, Babe Ruth. Her mother loved writing, music and literature. The little they had in common was born that spring in Gilbert, Kansas.

Baby Ruth was never forgotten. The search for her covered miles of dusty country roads in cars that were notoriously unreliable and topped out at 40 miles per hour. Tips on how to find her came from fortune tellers and photographers, bank robbers and beauty salon operators.  In the end, “Finding Baby Ruth” wasn’t what anyone expected.

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