Tuesday, May 25, 1999

D-Day for the Doyles

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14 children - whose names all start with 'D' - will help Cheviot couple celebrate 50 years together

BY BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ruth and Donald Doyle will celebrate their 50th anniversary Friday. (Yoni Pozner photo) | ZOOM |

        Divorce was never an option for Donald and Ruth Doyle. After all, they joked, who would want sole custody of 14 children?

        So, the Cheviot couple will mark 50 years of marriage Friday and celebrate this weekend with their children and 24 grandchildren.

        The occasion brings back fond memories of growing up in a big family. They didn't have a lot of material things, but there was always enough love to go around.

        Oldest son, Daniel Doyle, 44, of Sharonville, fondly recalls how his mother cried when he moved out to go to college, even though she still had 12 other kids at home.

THE 14 DOYLES

Here are Donald and Ruth Doyle's children:   • Donna Roll, 48, Delhi Tonwship.   • Daniel Doyle, 44, Sharonville.   • Debbie Cheek, 43, Price Hill.   • Dennis Doyle, 42, Erlanger.   • Diana Schmitt, 40, Bridgetown.   • Duane Doyle, 39, Burlington.   • David Doyle, 39, Western Hills.   • Denise Holscher, 37, Cheviot.   • Darren Doyle, 35, Clifton.   • Donald Doyle, 32, Bridgetown.   • Darleen Sweetland, 32, Madisonville.   • Dale Doyle, 31, Covedale.   • Dina Doyle, 28, Clifton.   • Dean Doyle, 26, Naperville, Ill.

        Their daughter, Diana Schmitt, 40, of Bridgetown, remembers her mom's advice: Don't sweep dirt under other people's doorsteps. “Our house was not a house where you heard about gossip, because with 14 yourselves, it could happen to you.”

        “And it probably did,” adds daughter Donna Roll, 48, of Delhi.

        Diana attributes her parents' long marriage to faith. “There have been situations in our lives they never buckled into because of their faith in God.”

        • Like 1978, when Donna's third child was born with Down syndrome.

        • Like 1992, when they lost their home in Delhi.

        • Like 1997, when Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer.

        • Like 1998, when Diana donated a kidney to younger sister Denise.

        And then, there's the day-to-day responsibility that comes with raising children.

        “When I started having kids, I said, "Mom, you made it look so easy, and it's not,' ” says Donna, their oldest child and mother of four. “You talk to them now and you find out it wasn't that easy. Dad was working a couple of jobs. Mom didn't drive until she was 50.”

        With 14 children, including two sets of twins, the family tree branches got a little tangled. At Donna's wedding, Ruth was pregnant with her second youngest child, Dina. She had the baby three days later. Donna was pregnant with her oldest child while Ruth was pregnant with her youngest. Ruth's oldest grandchild is 5 months older than her son, Dean.

How it began
        After working and raising all those children, Ruth, 72, and Don, 74, can finally sit on their porch on a warm spring day and talk about marriage and family. They look relaxed and cool, Don in shorts and Ruth with her short white hair, both wearing comfortable sneakers.

        They shake their heads at the 50 percent divorce rate in this country. People, they say, aren't willing to give marriage a chance.

        “It should be a commitment,” Don says. “They don't want to give anything up.”

        “You have to give up a lot, but you gain in other ways,” Ruth adds. “Bad times don't stay forever. Neither do good times.”

        Ruth Creeden and Donald Doyle are both Irish-German Catholics born in Price Hill. He saw a picture of her at a friend's house and said, “I'm going to marry that girl.” It was love at first sight.

        “Not for me,” Ruth counters.

        “She tried to put me off on her sister,” he says with a laugh. “It didn't work.”

        After dating five months, he proposed in her living room in December 1948, and they were married May 28, 1949, at St. William Church, Price Hill, the same church where they'll celebrate their anniversary Sunday.

        When they met, he was 23 and worked for the National Guard. She was 21 and a seamstress. They liked all kinds of music and liked to dance. Most of all, they had a lot of fun together. Still do.

        They didn't intend to have a big family.

        “It just turned out that way,” Don says. “We more or less thought four. Then it got three times four, plus two.”

        All 14 of their children's names start with “D,” and they joke that the youngest should have been named “D'End.” All except one lives in the Tristate. The youngest strayed to Illinois.

        For about 20 years, the family lived in the house where Ruth was born, a three-bedroom home on Rosemont Avenue in Price Hill.

        There was one room for the boys, one for the girls and one for the parents. For years, they had only one bathroom until they added another one in the early 1970s.

        With all their children competing for attention, family dinners were an important tradition. “Dinnertime was really a good time to talk about things, what happened that day,” Ruth says. “They each had a turn to say.”

        The house was a gathering spot for all the kids in the neighborhood. “They'd always say, "Go to Doyles. They won't know one more is there,' ” Ruth says.

        Their days were long. With 14 kids and multiple jobs, neither got much sleep.

        Don was a mail carrier by day and bartender by night. He'd work his postal route in the East End between 6 a.m.-2:30 p.m., go home to change clothes and head to his other job.

        She'd wait up for him until he got home at 2:30 a.m. to hear about his day and fill him in on hers. Besides, it was her chance to get caught up on housework. “I did a lot of scrubbing floors at night and ironing,” she says.

        Ruth raised her 14 children without disposable diapers, permanent press and a microwave. The faint of heart might have crumbled, but not Ruth.

        With eight boys and a husband, she used to iron 70 shirts a week.

        For years, she didn't have a dryer. In nice weather, she hung laundry on a clothesline. Neighbors used to count the cloth diapers and little socks blowing in the wind.

        “I washed every day of my life, including Christmas,” Ruth says. “If I'd skip one day, just think where I'd be.”

        Life got easier when the older children could help younger ones with homework and other tasks. The children were raised to be independent. They got their clothes ready for school the next day. They had to do chores.

        “They were responsible for putting their laundry away, and God help them if they didn't,” Ruth says.

        She made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for all the children's lunches — until they all wanted different things. Then they had to make their own. The family went through a 12-pound bucket of peanut butter each week.

        Ruth used to sew her children's clothes. “I couldn't go away from home, so I had to find my enjoyment at home. Those were two things I like, sewing and yard work.”

        It was too expensive to eat out or go to the movies. For entertainment, the family played cards and board games. They sang. When the kids were old enough, they got paper routes, baby-sat and did other jobs to earn money for stereos and movies.

        Ruth used time-out before it was fashionable. If the kids were out of control or two kids fought over a toy, they'd both end up sitting on chairs. There was no time to figure out who had it first, who was right, who was wrong.

        One day, Ruth says, their next-door neighbor was painting his house when he heard a squabble among the Doyle kids. “He said, "Ruth, would you like to borrow some of my chairs?' ”

        By the time the last child, Dean, was in school, she went to work at the College of Mount St. Joseph bookstore. “It's the best thing I ever did,” she says. “It gave me another outlook other than home doing the floors and sewing.” '

The hard times
        They've been through just about everything imaginable from financial burdens to illnesses to the dreaded phone call from a priest that a child has been in a serious accident. (Daniel survived.)

        One of the toughest times was losing their five-bedroom house in Delhi, where they moved in 1981. Eleven years later, three sides of the foundation crumbled. They had no recourse. Structural damage was covered up before they purchased the home. The man who sold it to them had died. It was unsafe, and they couldn't afford to fix it. They filed bankruptcy.

        “It was an awful sad time,” Ruth recalls. “We lost everything we owned.”

        Then, there's the agony of seeing a child go through pain. When Donna's third oldest child was born with Down syndrome, little was known about it. Donna scraped to find material to educate herself.

        “Every piece of paper I got with information, my Mom said, "Give to me. I want to read it, too.' We all learned together. My family was so supportive.” Donna's daughter, now 21, works at Bayley Place in Delhi.

        Don is a quiet man, but when he learned of Ruth's breast cancer diagnosis in December 1997, he got even more quiet.

        “I was worried to death,” he says. “When you mention cancer, you think, "How long has she got?' ”

        She had a tumor removed and went through 31 radiation treatments. There's no sign of cancer now, and she feels great. Her children attribute her recovery to a positive attitude.

        “I guess I handled it like I did everything else,” she says. “Tomorrow's another day.” @subhed:Time to rest @rbody: The Doyles have lived in their home in Cheviot for five years. Don retired from the Postal Service in 1986 after 32 years. Ruth retired four years ago from Lutz Flowers.

        Now, she has time to work in the yard, and he's taken up golf. They can travel. They both enjoy attending their grandchildren's games and other activities.

        They've attended more graduations than they care to remember. Not that they aren't proud, but truth be known, Ruth would rather scrub floors. “I'm gonna tell you,” she says leaning forward in her lawn chair, “graduations are boring!”

        Still, family gatherings are important: the holidays, the baptisms, the weddings. Their oldest granddaughter, Jennifer Roll, was married last Friday.

        “The best times,” Ruth says, “are still when we're all together.”

       

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