Ruth Knight probably never thought of her life as inspirational, but to her 12-year-old grandson, her story of triumph and tragedy was all that and more.

So, when it came time to pick a topic for a Gorham Middle School history project, Forrest Plaisted chose her. Now, his exhibit, “The Triumphs and Tragedies of Ruth Knight: Average American,” which intertwines his Westbrook grandmother’s biography with history, has earned him a trip to the national finals of a National History Day contest.

“I can’t believe he chose me,” Knight said. “He’s my star.”

A sixth-grader, Plaisted and his project will compete June 10-14 in a contest for students in Grades 6-12 sponsored by National History Day. The students conduct extensive research related to an annual theme and present their findings in one of four categories: exhibits, documentaries, performances or papers. At the national contest, held at the University of Maryland, participants have the opportunity to win awards of up to $5,000 and university scholarships.

In the state’s National History Day finals in April, Plaisted placed second in the exhibit category, earning the chance for national competition.

“He’s the only sixth-grader in Maine to win,” said his father, Michael Plaisted.

As a girl growing up in troubled times – sometimes with little food and left in the cold for punishment – Ruth Knight toiled in vegetable gardens, survived a forest fire and beatings in her first marriage.

“He traces the tragedies and triumphs of her life from having her mother die in childbirth in 1934 to being beaten as a wife at a time there were no domestic shelters to marrying Cliff Knight, a veteran of Iwo Jima,” said Cathy Plaisted, Forrest’s mother and

associate interim pastor at First Baptist Church in Westbrook.

Plaisted’s red, white and blue exhibit is mounted on three, 6-foot-high wooden panels. The exhibit depicts his paternal grandmother’s childhood, midlife and more recent years. It includes photographs and rationing tickets from World War II, when commodities like butter, meat and gasoline were limited for people on the home front.

Carpenter said the exhibit even includes background music, one of Knight’s favorites, “In the Mood,” by Glenn Miller.

Punished and abused

Ruth Knight was born in 1934 in the old Westbrook Hospital on Main Street. Her mother died when she was 3 days old. Her father remarried and she had a stepmother and a stepsister. But, she didn’t know until age 8 that her real mother had died.

Knight was born during the Depression years. Forrest said a meal for his grandmother as a young child was sometimes just two pieces of bread with mayonnaise. Her stepsister would get the family’s last slices of baloney and cheese.

Knight said her stepmother was physically and mentally abusive. “I had a stepmother who wasn’t the best,” Knight said.

She was often punished without an explanation of what she had done. Forrest Plaisted said she would be sent outside in storms without a coat.

At age 11, her father and stepmother divorced. But the young girl didn’t know it until she arrived home one afternoon from school in Falmouth, where the family had lived. Her stepmother and stepsister weren’t home, and the place had been left nearly bare. “Everything was gone,” Knight said.

She waited alone for her father to come home. “She sat and cried,” her grandson said.

Her father put her on a bus to the farm her aunt and uncle owned in Brownfield. The farmhouse didn’t have electricity or modern plumbing. Her daily duties included lugging firewood and pumping water from a hand pump in the yard.

She toiled in a garden at the farm. In those days, Americans cultivated what were known as Victory Gardens to augment the nation’s food supply during World War II.

Life on the Brownfield farm was primitive. “You had to work,” Knight said.

Two years later, another disaster struck. The farm was wiped out in the forest fire of 1947. She was in school when she saw the fire come down a mountain.

Knight ran home from school and escaped the fire in a horse-drawn buggy. She said the next day it looked like the area had been bombed.

“The only thing I saved was my doll,” Knight said.

Her father found a home for Ruth, then 16, with the Watkins family in Windham. “That was the best home I had,” Knight recalled.

She graduated from Windham High School in 1952 and then won a beauty contest. She was crowned Miss Sebago Land that July.

No place to go

In October 1952, she embarked on what became a 17-year ordeal.

“I got married right out of high school,” Knight said.

She said her first husband, now deceased, was an alcoholic and had a bad temper. She said battered women are afraid and don’t dare to leave.

“I was scared to do anything,” she said.

She had two children with him and endured beatings in an effort to keep her family together. She didn’t have a car or a job.

“I had no place to go,” she said.

Her grandson said his grandmother was beaten regularly. Through compiling his project he learned that the first shelter in Maine for abused women didn’t open until 1978.

Knight declined to reveal specifics about the abuse.

“You hear about murders,” she said, “but by the grace of God it could have been me.”

Finally, she mustered the courage to divorce her husband in 1969. The Watkins family stepped up and helped locate to a place of her own. She also said the Windham Hill Church helped, too.

On her own, she regained lost confidence and got a job. She managed the parking garage at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. She met Frank “Cliff” Knight through his sister, who was a co-worker. She married Knight in 1974.

“The second marriage was wonderful,” Knight said. “I always said God gave me a second chance.”

He had fought at Iwo Jima in World War II. She said he told her he didn’t know how he survived the battle.

They bought a country store and owned a laundramat in Lovell. In 1981, they built a new home in Westbrook, where she still lives. Cliff Knight died in August. Now, she wrestles with grief.

In addition to Forrest, Ruth Knight has a granddaughter, Allison Plaisted, who just graduated from Texas Tech University. She is the daughter of John Plaisted of Texas.

Forrest and his father will fly to Maryland for the national finals. The trip will mark a new experience for Forrest – “He’s never flown,” his dad said.

His coach, Jeff Carpenter, a Gorham Middle School teacher, will transport the exhibit to Maryland in his car. Carpenter was the adviser for an after-school history club in which students developed their History Day entries. When they arrive at the college, they’ve established the campus statue of Kermit the Frog as the rendezvous point to meet Carpenter. Carpenter also will serve as a national judge, but not in Plaisted’s category.

Carpenter said the Gorham School Department is paying for his student’s expenses on the trip. He said his student did very well.

“He’s got a passionate story,” Carpenter said.

Cutline (plaisted 2) iate pastor. Cutline (Miss Sebago) – Winning a beauty crown was a triumph for Ruth Knight among her life’s tragedies. Her grandson chose her as his topic for a National History Day exhibit.

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