Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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Ruth Stevens' day begins with quiet time at 4 a.m.

She awakens in her two-room suite on the fourth floor of Roanoke's Patrick Henry Hotel. She is alone, and the city is sleeping.

She sits in her brown recliner in the cramped space of her kitchen/living area with her Bible close at hand. For the next 30 minutes she prays and contemplates spiritual things.

She has known disappointment. She has known fear. She has known gratitude.

She knows that without faith, her life, or any life, is nothing.

She gets up early and has done so for years.

"Why not give God my best," she asks, "by having my quiet time when I know I won't be disturbed?"

Stevens has lived at the Patrick Henry for more than 37 years. She is the hotel's last "permanent" resident.

At age 26, she came to Roanoke from Salem to work as a teaching assistant in the Head Start program begun by Total Action Against Poverty.

She hoped to secure lodging at the Roanoke YWCA, but she discovered that all its rooms were occupied.

Back then, the Y also leased rooms from the Patrick Henry.

"No daughter of mine is going to be living in any hotel," her mother vowed. But the Y's director assured her that the young women at the hotel were subject to the same rules as at the Y itself.

Stevens moved into the only available room. That was in 1967.

Flexible

At first, she had a roommate. They lived on the fifth floor and ate food prepared from the Y's on-site kitchen.

In the next few years, for a variety of reasons, she moved to the sixth floor, back to the fifth and, in 1973, to the fourth - where she has been ever since.

When the Y discontinued its lease, Stevens and her roommate continued to live at the Patrick Henry. They had one room and used a hotplate for cooking.

Later, the hotel combined sets of two rooms into suites.

Her space is small. Fortunately, she is, too - 5 feet tall, if that.

Her cereal boxes stand in a line atop the cabinets with an inch or so of their bottoms jutting over the edge to make them easier to grasp.

The morning sun pours through the windows, bathing more than a dozen houseplants with light. Stevens tends them assiduously. She ticks off their names: crown of thorns, red and white amaryllis, Moses in the cradle, angel-wing begonia, African violet, Boston fern, prayer plant.

She inherited several from former neighbors who died or moved to assisted living facilities. At one time, the building had some 40 apartments.

Stevens has to stretch to reach some of the plants, but she is used to stretching and reaching.

For the past year, she has watered the plants in the hotel's lobby and offices. It's one more activity in her elegantly structured week.

Twice a week, Stevens rides the 6:45 a.m. Valley Metro bus to Tanglewood Mall to walk and participate in an exercise class.

On Thursdays, she goes to her church, Greene Memorial United Methodist, and helps assemble the newsletter. On Fridays, she helps put together the Sunday bulletin.

On weekdays, she walks to the post office on Church Avenue to pick up the hotel's mail.

She takes the bus to Kmart to pick up her prescriptions and to Kroger for her food.

In her free time, she turns in early, unless she is engrossed in a cryptogram - a form of word puzzle.

She is a fiend for them.

A worker

Stevens and her three siblings were born at home at Callaway in Franklin County, where her father operated a water-powered mill.

At 15 months, she contracted encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. It paralyzed her left side, most noticeably her left arm. Later, she developed other infirmities.

She copes. She ties her shoes with her right hand. She has done embroidery.

She is not given to complaint.

Stevens graduated from Ferrum College when it was a two-year school. She attended Radford College (now Radford University) but did not graduate. She took courses at other schools.

Eventually, she took an aptitude test at the Virginia Employment Commission, and learned that her skills lay in nursing or kindergarten teaching.

She worked first at Greenvale Nursery School and then at Head Start.

She retired on disability in 1990. She is 64.

Faith defeats fear

When Stevens first moved into the Patrick Henry, her rent was $60 per month. Now it's about $300, she says.

But she won't pay it anymore.

On April 23, she will move out of her small apartment and rent another apartment in a home near downtown.

In 2002, Affirmative Equities of New York, the hotel's owner, said it planned to renovate the 10-story, 117-room building and create an independent living center for senior citizens.

Last week, Andrew Jubelt, Affirmative's president, declined to discuss the plans, but said the hotel remains open.

He did not know Stevens still lived there.

Not long ago, Joy Barlow, the hotel's general manager, suggested that Stevens explore other housing options.

"She told me she didn't want them to tell me I just had 30 days to find something," says Stevens.

When she realized that downtown living had become fashionable, she feared she would find nothing affordable.

"I was living downtown when it wasn't cool," she says. "And now somebody has discovered it's cool, so ..."

So she worried, and felt fear's cold breath on her indomitable optimism.

"I had to put this in God's hands," she says. "Believe me," she adds with a laugh, "there were times when I said, 'God, forgive me for a wavering faith.'"

A fellow church member offered her the apartment near downtown. Stevens and her relatives inspected it. Everyone approved. The deal was sealed.

Stevens will miss the security and the camaraderie with the hotel's staff.

But sadness does not cling to her. Gratitude does.

"When the time comes for me to leave," she says, "it's because God has something else for me to do someplace else. My mission here has been fulfilled."

She does feel a pang over losing the morning sun that streams through her windows. But in her new place, she says, she'll be able to watch the sunsets.