Ruth Krech Degen is the great granddaughter of Adam and Margaret Gerten, and the granddaughter of Henry Gerten, the second of their ten children. Henry and Frank Gerten, the oldest of Adam and Margaret’s children, are the patriarchs of the Gerten farms in Dakota County. Ruth’s mother, Dorothy Gerten Krech, was the oldest of Henry and Angela’s five children, and she in turn is the oldest of Dorothy and Orville Krech’s eleven children. Ruth grew up working on both the Henry Gerten and Walter Krech farms in what was then rural Dakota County and is now Inver Grove Heights. She, like all of her first cousins, shared in the field work, the softball games after six o’clock, the Catholic and Lutheran influences, and the fun of playing card games they learned from their parents.
She graduated from the College of St. Benedict and completed graduate studies at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota. She is currently retired from secondary math education, followed by a business career at Control Data, Ceridian, and Oracle. She lives with her husband Michael in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and spends time skiing in the mountains or on the lake, perfecting her golf swing, and attempting to master all things domestic. Her pride is intrinsically tied to the welfare and success of her ten brothers and sisters—Dave, Dan, Jim, Pattie, Jan, Wally, Mary, Ginny, Barb and Steve. They never cease to inspire her and keep her laughing with new stories when they meet to pick raspberries on the last vestige of the Krech truck farm. Writing is an avocation, as you may have now guessed. Her first foray into storytelling was And Then There Were Eleven — stories of growing up in a little green stucco house on old Middle Road surrounded by rural Dakota County.