She realized it was going to take a lot of bags to keep her community clean, so she contacted the Missouri Department of Transportation to request their roadside cleanup bags. Ron Freese, the maintenance supervisor for MoDOT's Cappeln facility, gave her 250 bags and Short's been working on filling all of them.
Weather permitting, Short covers a few miles each day. On average, she collects more than 16 bags a month with household trash she finds along the roadsides. Boone Monument Road, off Highway 47, is the dirtiest, she says, and the most common items she finds are disposable diapers.
Short keeps count of the numbers of bags she fills each month and reports those totals to MoDOT for their records.
Freese says Short is unique in the frequency of her collection. Most groups clean up once or twice a year and then schedule a bag pickup with MoDOT. Luckily, Freese lives in Marthasville himself, so as he drives home each night, he looks for Short's bags and picks them up along his way.
"She's doing it all time," he says. "It's the most I've ever seen. She's definitely dedicated."
For Ruth, it's just another way to serve.
"It's making a difference," she says. It's good exercise and hopefully, it's an opportunity to serve the community, too."
Short's lived her entire life that way.
Born in 1937, Ruth Ann Hall was the oldest of four children living in Memphis, Tenn. Her family lived with her grandparents during the Depression. She was the first in her family to go to college when she headed off to Millsaps in Jackson, Tenn.
Short studied to be a teacher and when recruiters from Colorado came to Mississippi, she moved to Arvada, a suburb of Denver, to teach elementary school. During the summer she attended the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, earning her master's degree in educational psychology and guidance.
As a fourth-grade teacher, Short remembers one student in particular who later made his mark on the world. Karl Rove loved to read, she says, devouring everything from the World Book Encyclopedias to books on the Civil War.
"He wanted to know all about everything," she says, of her former student who is best known as former President George W. Bush's top adviser.
After four years of teaching, though, Short says she became disillusioned with the lack of cooperation from parents and decided she'd taken the wrong path. She returned to Memphis and taught another year before finding a new direction.
Discovering an interest in dentistry, she began taking dental classes and became a registered dental hygienist. An article in a Baptist church publication about a dentist and his wife who were retiring from their dental mission in Nigeria, West Africa, put her on a new path.
"God spoke to me through that article," she says. "I wrote the International Mission Board. They didn't write back - they telephoned!"
A few interviews later, Short was appointed a career missionary and after an extensive 16-week orientation that included training in everything from first aid to linguistics to auto mechanics, in January 1968 she boarded a plane toward Africa.
At the other end of that journey, Short learned that God has a sense of humor.
The missionaries who met her plane informed her that civil war had broken out in the area she was assigned to do dental work. Instead, she'd be teaching school.
Luckily, it turned out to be a good experience and Short taught sixth grade at a mission school and at a language school before finally getting the opportunity to work in a dental center.
Short says that Nigerians don't care for sweets, so they generally have good teeth, but the lack of toothbrushes and flossing made gum disease a problem.Ê Part of her work involved traveling to the "bush" where she would distribute "chew sticks."
Chew sticks are citrus wood that are bitten at one end to fray, replicating a toothbrush.Ê Baking soda and table salt are used with the sticks as a cleaning paste. The baking soda brightens and cleans the teeth, Short says, while the salt works as an abrasive agent.Ê For floss, they gave out sewing thread.
In addition to this work, Short taught at a government secondary boarding school for girls and later at a Baptist pastors school. Her teaching assignments in Nigeria were rewarding, she said, because the people understand that education is their ticket to a better life.
But each assignment also presented a new challenge - a different language. Short said there are more than 500 tribal languages in Nigeria and she studied several of them, including Yoruba and Hausa.
Twelve years after she arrived in Nigeria, Short was finally sent to Eastern Nigeria to work at the dental center where she'd originally been assigned. The civil war had ended and this new road would lead her to love.
Dr. James Perry Short was a St. Louis dentist born in Lonedell and raised in St. Clair. On one of Ruth Ann's furloughs home to America, Dr. Short and his wife heard her speak about the need for volunteer missionaries to help with short-term dentistry care.
Dr. Short and his wife traveled to several countries to help and later, after his wife passed away from breast cancer, he and his daughter, Jennifer, finally ended up serving in Nigeria, with Ruth Ann.
On Dr. Short's second trip to Nigeria, Ruth Ann says "romance blossomed."
Dating wasn't acceptable in Africa, so the Americans would "go for haircuts," which she says involved a long two-hour drive to another mission station.
The couple decided to marry and came home in 1988 after Dr. Short suffered a stroke in the mission office. Luckily, his patient at the time was a physician, who in the middle of a root canal, got up and cared for the dentist.
"Doc Perry" Short and Ruth Ann Hall were married in First Baptist Church of Harvester in St. Charles County in 1989. They became special project missionaries, and continued to travel to Nigeria until 1991.
An avid archer, "Doc" as Ruth called him, gave his new wife lessons as a birthday gift and the two began competing in Senior Olympics across the nation. They also were active Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteers and spent a lot of time in Marthasville during the 1993 flood, serving meals to the community.
The Shorts enjoyed the community so much, when the Charrette Senior Apartments were rebuilt in 1995 after being destroyed in the flood, the couple moved to Marthasville. They were part of the Marthasville community until 2001, when another stroke forced a move to the Baptist Home in Ironton for help caring for the doctor.
"Doc" Short died in 2004, but Ruth Ann stayed on at the home, volunteering for a few years before returning to Marthasville in 2007.
In addition to her roadside beautification mission, today she helps with the senior adult ministry at her church, Charrette Baptist Church, outside Marthasville, and she makes rounds at area nursing homes two days a week, visiting folks from her community and those who just don't get company.
Short helps the homebound in her community and drives others to doctor appointments, grocery stores - even to the Washington Senior Center where she and her passengers participate in exercise classes.
A favorite Bible verse of Short's is Acts 20:35: "In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than receive.' " (New American Standard Bible).
And so walks Ruth Ann Short.
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