Highlights of Ray Ruge's Extraordinary Life - Part 1

Editor's Note: It is an understatement to say that Ray Ruge was accomplished in many areas and lived a remarkable life. He was born on June 21, 1908, in New York City to Bernard Arnold and Beulah E. Ruge.  U.S. Census records show the family lived in Manhattan (1910), Bronx (1915), Tarrytown (1920), Carmel (1925 & 1930), and East Orange, Essex NJ (1940). Raymond married Valice Foley in 1942. 

For information about current ice boating on the Hudson River go to these websites:
White Wings and Black Ice,  HRIYC or Hudson River Ice Yacht Preservation Trust .

Ray Ruge in his "Icicle". Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum

Editor's Note: The following text is from "Madison Day by Day", Wisconsin State Journal, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 1945 by Betty Cass.

"Deuce" hiking on Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin. Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

In the February 10, [1945] Saturday Evening Post, which subscribers will receive tomorrow and which will appear on the news stands Thursday, is what is probably the best article on ice-boating ever written, titled, “Fastest Sleigh Ride in the World,” which is interesting for many reasons. 
​
First, and perhaps most important since we have two lakes in our laps, it points out, and proves, that ice-boating, “once a rich man’s game, today is a sport for anyone who has seventy-five dollars, a craving for speed, and plenty of ice."
​
Second, it gives many intriguing facts about famous old racing ice boats of Wisconsin, and brings to light (for practically all Madisonians except the few iceboating fans still left here) the fact that one of the two premier trophies of the sport, the Hearst cup, “now rests at Madison, jealously guarded by the 350 square-footer, Fritz, owned by Fritz Jungbluth and sailed by Carl Bernard.

Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

Third, and most interesting, the article is written by a man now living in Madison but who didn’t live here when he wrote it.

This man, Raymond A. Ruge, of West Point, NY, now an architect at Badger Ordinance Works, landed in both the pages of the Post and in Madison by two of the most circuitous routes we've ever encountered. One of them is traced in detail in the Keeping Posted department of the Post:

RAYMOND A. RUGE says that the most remarkable thing about him as a writer is that he is not a writer and that, as a nonwriter, he has made both the Encyclopedia Britanica [sic] and the Post the same year - both by request. (He wrote the Britanica’s section about iceboating.)

We asked Mr. Ruge to tell us how he got to be such a successful writing nonwriter. “You have to be born in New York, move to Lake Mahopac, about fifty miles north of New York, when you're eight years old, go to Princeton, become an architect, forsake architecture for running a hotel and, to keep the hotel running, develop winter sports in the vicinity.” At least that’s the way it happened in Mr. Ruge’s case.

As a winter-sports lover, Mr. Ruge would have preferred to go to Dartmouth, but his headmaster at Pawling School thought he had better go to a college which didn’t have such pleasant winters. Princeton, Mr. Ruge believes, ideally filled this bill. He still remembers the Jersey winters, with their mud and fog, with a shudder, but he played ice hockey, and lacrosse in the spring. He picked up a Phi Beta Kappa key along the way.
​
The depression by 1935 had made architecture a profession which men ‘used to follow,’ so Ruge took over the management of a country club hotel near West Point. Winter business was nonexistent, except when snow for skiing was on the ground. To bolster trade, Mr. Ruge built a couple of iceboats and introduced New Yorkers to the sport. When it snowed, the skiers came. When it didn’t snow, the iceboaters came. Mr. Ruge probably got the greatest bang out of the fact that a regular guest for the iceboating was a manager of the lordly Waldorf.  (Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC)

Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

For more information on the Icicle:
An Up-To-Date Ice Yacht Using a Sail Boat Rig by Ray Ruge

​Mr. Ruge built Charette II after his old style boat had been trimmed by a little Wisconsin bow-steerer.
​
Charette II won four successive Class C and two open championships of the E. I. Y. A. and won and twice successfully defended, the Eastern Championship Iceboat Pennant of America.

Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

To keep his hand in at architecture, Mr. Ruge designed a cottage-type summer resort at Lake George in 1939 and supervised the building.

“Starting with a hayfield, four ancient apple trees and a beautiful stretch of sandy beach on May first,” he said, “we set four contractors to work racing one another, and completed the place and were ready for business at four p.m., July first. By six p. m. there wasn’t an empty room.”

THAT, then, is the round-about way Mr. Ruge got into the Post . . that and being recommended to the editor of the magazine as being the man most likely to write a good article on modern iceboating. And THIS is the way he got to Madison:

When the war started, Mr. Ruge was engaged, as an architect, in slum-clearance work in New York. Since then he has been doing architectural work on war constructions, and as he sometimes has a choice of locations, he has made it a point to choose jobs which are in places which offer winter sports. Several of them have taken him to the west, one in particular taking him to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, near Lake Louise, where he did some skiing at 9,000 feet in a beautiful spot which could be reached ONLY on skiis [sic], or by snowshoes.

​When an opportunity to take a job at Badger Ordinance Works in Madison, WI, was offered, he chose it promptly, and last November landed here with Mrs. Ruge and their year-old son Peter, expecting a big winter of ice boating . . . expectations which have resulted in exactly one hour of the sport to date.

“I’m amazed at the apparent lack of interest in iceboating here,” he says, “In the east we travel 20 and 30 miles for a day of iceboating, while here, with two wonderful lakes at your front doors, only a handful of people take advantage of them.”

So sincere is Mr. Ruge in his enthusiasm for the sport and in his interest in helping revive it that he has become a member of the committee recently formed under the auspices of the Madison municipal recreation division which is planning a series of regattas here, starting Sunday, Jan. 21, on Lake Monona,  during which he expects to get in that long-anticipated iceboating on “the famous lakes of Madison” of which he’s heard so much.
 
Editor’s Note:  Badger Ordinance Works in Madison, WI
In the months prior to the U.S. entry into WWII, the U.S. government began construction of several smokeless powder plants to meet the increasing needs of the U.S. and its allies fighting against Hitler and the Third Reich. Ideas to build upon or extend existing production capabilities at existing plants were discarded in favor of building additional plants at new locations which provided greater safety from enemy attacks or sabotage. Spreading the workload out at several plants would also provide employment opportunities throughout the country. Badger was first operated by Hercules Powder which had a plant in Port Ewen, NY.
Badger Army Ammunition Plant Historical Overview 1941-2006

---

If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

Donate Now

Join Today