Ted Ruprecht left us in December after 96 years of a very full life, and Joan followed her sweetheart in February, age 90. Professor Theodore Ruprecht was one of the founding members of the Humboldt State College Economics Department. Joan Ledgerwood Ruprecht was a microbiologist who worked at the Humboldt Country Health Department, where she retired in 1992 as Laboratory Director.
Ted taught at HSC/HSU from 1958 to 1992. During this time, he was awarded a Fulbright research grant to study the effects of rapid population growth in the Philippines, and he became an internationally recognized scholar in the field of demography in developing countries. In 1968-9, he served as a consultant to the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France. In 1970, he was selected Outstanding Professor of the Year by the HSU student body. Toward the end of his career, he received another Fulbright, this time to be the first teacher of western economics at the Karl Marx Institute in Sophia, Bulgaria.
Ted grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and Long Beach, California. At Long Beach High and Occidental College, Ted was a track star: a sprinter, anchor of the relay team. At a meet in the Los Angeles Coliseum, his team set a world record for the year, which was also the second fastest winning time in history. While in graduate school at UC Berkeley, he tried out for the Olympics.
Joan Ledgerwood grew up in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Public Health at Cal. In 1955, she married Ted Ruprecht. They moved to Los Angeles, where he taught briefly at Occidental, and she worked in the Public Health Department. They started a family and moved to Humboldt. That’s when their adventures really began.
They already had three small children (Janet, Carol, and Phillip) by the time they went to the Philippines, where they lost a baby (Luke) in childbirth. A few years after they returned to Humboldt, Elaine was born. When Ted received a research grant for Yale, Joan bundled the family into an elderly station wagon and they camped across Canada, headed for Connecticut. Later, they returned along the southern United States. Soon after they arrived home, they started planning their sojourn in France.
Joan was born a horse-girl, but she only rode them in her dreams until she spent a high school summer working at a resort that had horses. When her daughter Janet was two, Joan bought a Shetland Pony. In France, she signed her daughters up for riding lessons and took a few herself. Back in Humboldt, she acquired her first horse.
Ted’s running was stalled by injury, but while he was away for a summer in Seoul serving as an advisor to the Korean Development Institute, Joan started running. She had three goals: to complete the Clam Beach Run, a marathon, and a Ride & Tie (an event that combines riding and running). She gradually drew Ted into distance running.
Ted became a member of the Six Rivers Running Club in the 70’s. Riding took longer, because he thought horses were a waste of money and cow pasture. But after Joan persuaded him that breeding horses was a great tax dodge, this economics professor began to participate whole-heartedly in the sport, as well as in long distance Endurance Riding.
Ted and Joan were founding members of Save Rural Trinidad and the Trinidad Coastal Land Trust. They granted the Land Trust an easement on the Ruprecht property in Trinidad to keep it rural forever.
When her first three kids were in college and high school, Joan volunteered at the Humboldt County Public Health Department, worked her way into a job, and ultimately became the Laboratory Director. She especially enjoyed earning money dedicated to having fun. Joan became a regional expert on tick-borne Lyme Disease and represented Humboldt County at an international conference in Vienna.
The Ruprechts were founding and lifetime members of the local endurance club, Redwood Empire Endurance Riders. After they both retired in 1993, they began traveling extensively with horses and competing all over the western United States.
Their original trip to the Philippines and back had been by ship, and the family also returned from Europe by ship. In later retirement, the couple discovered the joys of cruising. They went everywhere: Africa, around South America, back across the Atlantic to Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkan Countries and the Norwegian fjords. Later, they took shorter trips to Alaska, Mexico, and Hawaii.
Back at home, Ted concentrated on his extensive flower and vegetable gardens. Joan taught several generations of girls to ride.
During the whole of their 70-year marriage, they demonstrated unswerving love. In addition to raising four children, they extended their family by taking in Robert Yarber, an HSU student, and Slavena Savova, a teenager from Sophia, and they helped raise their grandson, Louis Ruprecht.
They are buried together in the Trinidad Cemetery, but anyone who knows them knows they are irrepressible and have probably taken flight for Parts Unknown.
Those of us left behind will be holding a memorial celebration on August 2 at the Ruprecht Ranch in Trinidad from noon until 5 pm. This will be a potluck. If you would like to help us celebrate, please RSVP to Janet either by text at 707-407-6258 or email at janet.ruprecht@gmail.com.
This article appears in The Conductor.