Ruby Jeanine Echo-Hawk
1929-2024
Ruby Jeanine (Fischer) Echo-Hawk was born September 17, 1929 in Pawnee, Oklahoma, the youngest daughter of Merle (Tanner) Fischer and Harry Fischer. She was named after her mother’s grandmother, Ruby Haven, and a popular 1928 song, “Jeannine (I Dream of Lilac Time).” Her father served a term in the Oklahoma state legislature and multiple terms as mayor of Pawnee, OK, and her mother worked as a community midwife with Dr. Haddox. Together Harry and Merle operated the Fischer Bakery in downtown Pawnee, a multigenerational family business. Jeanine spent a lively childhood playing around the Pawnee Courthouse and the Bakery, friends with the black children of the town, the Jewish families, and Indian families. Becoming friends with members of the Echo Hawk family, she married Walter Roy Echo-Hawk, Sr. - an interracial marriage in a segregated community. They had four children: Walter Jr., Lance, Debra, and Roger, and the new family moved briefly to Colorado and New Mexico.
Launching into nomadic Air Force life, the family moved to Louisiana, then back to Oklahoma. And moving to mid-Missouri in 1956, when Jeanine’s youngest son started kindergarten, she enrolled in a nearby college. In late 1962 Jeanine graduated with a straight A academic record with a BS in education from Central Missouri State College, Warrensburg. Her first job was with a bookmobile library in central Missouri. She earned a certificate in English and French and taught as a substitute teacher in Missouri and Puerto Rico. She found her first fulltime teaching position in 1965 at Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico, at the new E Street Elementary School. She saved her income, and when the family moved to Jefferson City, Missouri in 1966, she bought a forest and a rambling country mansion among the hills of Callaway County. Moving to North Dakota in 1968, she became a kindergarten teacher.
When the family returned to Puerto Rico in late 1968, she resumed teaching at the E Street
Elementary School, earning a certificate in elementary education. Back in Missouri in
November 1970, she briefly taught high school English at Westphalia, moving on to teach
special education at Centertown Elementary School, getting a certificate in special education. In 1975, after the Centertown schools were annexed into the Jefferson City system, she taught kindergarten at South School, earning yet another certificate - this time in early childhood education. She taught at South School in the morning and Centertown in the afternoon. Then she went to Bellaire Elementary School at Centertown; then West Elementary School; then back to Bellaire. And finally she taught at the new Lawson Elementary School for several years before retiring in 1990.
Jeanine preferred a modest life of service not only as a teacher, but also helping people in need. She took her first job as a waitress at a restaurant in Pawnee when she was just age 11 or 12. She found the job to help a friend’s mother pay bills. When she retired in 1990, she transformed her Missouri forest home into a refuge for homeless immigrants from Mexico and Central America, helping her guests to learn English, find work, enter local churches, and become American citizens. Her lifetime of service slowly drew to a close after she decided to spend her final years in Oklahoma, moving to a country home at Masham, then settling once again in Pawnee.
Ruby Jeanine Fischer Echo-Hawk died on June 7th, 2024. In her passing, she left behind all four children, eight grandchildren, eighteen great-grandchildren and three great-greatgrandchildren.