The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Carthage, Jasper County

Discussion

May 4, 2008

Jo Ellis: Benefactor came up through industry ranks

There was a time when Ruth Kolpin Rubison would rise at 5 a.m. to travel through western Kansas and eastern Colorado, selling advertising for a small radio station in Goodland, Kan. She often would not make it home until midnight. A brief stint with another station in Garden City, Kan., led her to a more lucrative position with a radio station in Dodge City, Kan.

She was earning just $75 a week, but she was determined to follow a path that one day would lead to ownership of her own radio station. She became sales manager and a stockholder, and in 1957 helped the station begin broadcasting television. She joined American Women in Radio and Television, and the National Association of Broadcasters. While attending events for these two trade groups in Washington, D.C., Ruth met George Kolpin, a sales manager for CBS and a New York native who had grown up in Brooklyn.

Their interests meshed, but Ruth’s solid rural background told her, “I better watch out for this city slicker.” He asked her to dinner and dancing, and, more importantly, called her after she returned to Kansas. There were more calls and visits, and after an eight-month courtship, Ruth threw her caution to the Kansas winds and married George. He told her there were no women selling advertising in New York; she got three job offers.

But Ruth hadn’t given up the idea of owning her own radio station. They followed an inquiry to Carthage, and when Ruth visited the 250-watt station set up in the historic Dr. John Carter house, she told George, “This is it.” Barely having time to scuttle her New York plans, Ruth arrived in Carthage at 2 a.m. on a summer night in June 1962. George arrived in October.

“What a change for George, but he said he was tired of New York,” Ruth says. Inexperienced as an “on-air” person, he accepted the challenge along with the task of advertising sales. When he met some resistance to his “city ways,” he ditched his white shirt, bow tie and cuff links for boots and open-neck shirts. Solidifying his rural makeover, George served as chairman of the Jasper County Youth Fair for 16 years.

The couple began upgrading the station’s wattage; in 1965, they were granted a television franchise. Carthage Cablevision had just six hours of programming when it started up. In 1979, George suffered a debilitating stroke. He died four years later. Ruth carried on the radio and television broadcasting, and formed two additional cable corporations — Southwest Missouri Cable and City Vision — eventually serving 27 communities from Mulberry, Kan., to Kimberling City. Her son Dean was instrumental in operating the cable companies. Her son Ron currently owns KDMO-KMXL (now a 50,000-watt station), having taken over the license in 1990.

The cable companies were sold to Cox Communications in 1999, about the time Ruth retired from actively running the business. Today, traveling through these small communities, she has happy memories of bringing cable TV to their residents. In 1988, she was inducted into the Cable Pioneers Society.

Ruth’s life hasn’t been all business. She is responsible for the “Peace Star” that tops the Jasper County Courthouse. She restored the building on Fourth Street for her cable company in the early ’80s. Upset that the old Carthage Frisco rail depot was being demolished in 1986, she literally “stood guard” until she had purchased the building, moved it to her property and restored it. Ruth lived in the depot while restoring the old Carter mansion. All four levels were refurbished in 1992. The Civil War-era home now connects via an underground tunnel to her current home, the Carriage House, built in 2002.

She has served on many civic boards, including those of the United Way, Soroptimist International of Carthage, the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition and the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri. At a 2003 black-tie event for the Girl Scouts in Joplin, she was introduced to Dick Rubison, another community leader with a penchant for service, who later would become her husband.

Besides their volunteer work, the couple keep busy with a property management corporation, the Ruth I. Kolpin Charitable Foundation, and more than 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The foundation recently gave a six-figure donation to Missouri Southern State University’s television station for an upgrade to digital broadcast technology.

It’s not surprising to hear her sum up her current state of mind: “I still find life very interesting. I have a restless mind. I just keep wanting to do things.”

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Carthage, Jasper County
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