Goldstein: Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s daughter, dies at 102

From Richard Goldstein at the New York Times on March 9, 2019:

Even into her 90s she called him Daddy. She loved to tell of the 14-room apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side where he delighted in trimming the Christmas tree with icicles and how, when she began dating, he made sure she returned home by midnight.

In her later years, she traveled around the baseball map, most notably to the house he had figuratively built, telling of his life beyond the ballpark.

Julia Ruth Stevens, the adopted daughter of Babe Ruth, died on Saturday in an assisted living facility in Henderson, Nev., her son, Tom, said. A Boston Red Sox fan in her later years but always having a warm spot for the Yankees, she was 102.

She was born in Athens, Ga., on July 7, 1916, to Claire Hodgson, a teenage beauty, and her husband, Frank, who was many years his wife’s senior. They separated when Julia was a baby, and Ms. Hodgson went with her to New York and found work as an illustrator’s model.

Read the full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/obituaries/julia-ruth-stevens-dead-babe-ruth.html#click=https://t.co/EIYfBTbYPh



Originally published: March 12, 2019. Last Updated: March 12, 2019.