Jon Mark Beilue: Coming out on the other side

Culture change, life experiences forced Salzman to grow

 

Ruby Salzman and her parents flew from Los Angeles to Amarillo on May 10 so she could walk the stage at West Texas A&M University’s commencement for a second time, the latest to receive her MBA in health care management. Certainly, the allure of returning to a place that, in her words, “were the best times of my life,” was too much to resist.

Not that it started that way. Just more three months after it began, in December 2018, this calculated gamble, this cross-country risk, this cultural experiment, seemed all but over. It was just too much for the 18-year-old to play softball and study in a vastly different culture than her home in Northridge, Calif., 20 miles northwest of Hollywood.

“I spoke to my coaches that winter and I just said, ‘Guys, I don’t think I can do this. I need to go home for my mental state. I feel unwell,’” Salzman said. “We all just kind of sat there and cried. They really wanted me to stay.”

Mark Salzman, her dad, thought it best she returned to the Los Angeles area and find a college close to home. After all, her daughter had given it three months. Sheila Salzman, her mother, wasn’t so quick to give up.

She’d been to Canyon with her daughter for a campus visit in her senior year of high school. Yes, it got off to an odd start when a late flight found them among the last ones at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport. Then some wrong turns onto dirt roads seemed like the plot of some B-movie thriller before they emerged to find their Holiday Inn Express.

But the next day, they both were enamored with the beauty of the campus and the welcoming of strangers. A little more than a year later, something was telling her to tell Ruby to give it more time.

“You don’t want to see your child sad,” Sheila Salzman said. “But I just told her, ‘You have too much down time right now, this is not your season. You committed to WT. You need to stick with it.’

“I told her that you will like it more, but you have to give it a chance. I was adamant. I said, ‘Ruby, if you go through the season and you’re still not happy, then come home. But go through the season.’”

Ruby gathered herself. After the 2018 holiday break, she did not stay in the sunny climate of southern California, but instead got back on a plane and returned to the sometimes-unforgiving winter of the Texas Panhandle.

“It didn’t feel like it at the time I made it,” Ruby said, “but it was maybe the best decision I ever made.”

A mutually beneficial decision

Sometimes the hardest decisions eventually become the best decisions, especially when adjusting to college outside of your comfort zone. It takes patience, tenacity and grit to come out on the other side.

The college experience shines brightest when both student and university mutually benefit. WT pulled out the best and the hidden from Ruby—strength, independence, maturity, confidence—while providing the tools for an education in health care and psychology.

Ruby, in turn, gave the Lady Buffs an All-America softball career, contributed to a national championship, and left as one of the top players in the program’s history.

“I definitely learned I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was—mentally, physically and emotionally,” she said. “I was a lot more independent and able to do things on my own. I became a lot smarter—book smart, street smart, all of that.”

Sheila Salzman was spot on. Ruby’s second semester was easier. Softball season began that February. Classes were rolling again. Friends were multiplying. There wasn’t time, Ruby said, to miss home.

Then there was a pre-season social gathering with softball boosters and donors and team. Among the group was Stanley Schaeffer, for whom the softball stadium is named. There’s not a bigger fan of WT than Schaeffer, yet his demeanor is often quiet and reserved.

“Ruby is an old soul,” Sheila said. “She is more talkative with the older crowd than her own age group.”

It was Ruby who spied the white-haired gentleman, at the time in his mid-80s. She came over to initiate conversation.

“She came over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Ruby. I said, ‘Hi, I’m Stanley,’” Schaeffer said. “I’m telling you, she’s just a jewel.”

Schaeffer became like another grandfather to her, the one she looked for to get an after-game hug or just to talk. She spoke at his 90th birthday party. It was not a few perfunctory words either, but a speech from the heart.

During her freshman season in 2019, Ruby started all 47 games, led the Lady Buffs with 59 hits and 50 runs, and was named All-Lone Star Conference. Ruby initially selected WT as much for the academics in her major field of study as she did to play softball.

In her classes, Ruby, despite crushing time demands, tried to stay two weeks ahead. It didn’t hurt that she was one of several valedictorians—“we did it a little funky,” she said—at Chatsworth High School in Northridge.

As far as other adjustments, the plains were different. Unlike the San Fernando Valley, where were the mountains? “It was the flattest place I’ve ever been to,” she said. “It just goes and goes and goes.”

The pace was different, but more than anything, the people were different, and refreshingly so. Her parents noticed. Certainly, Ruby did.

“Everyone is so nice,” she said, “so nice it almost throws you off until you get used to it. The nicest people ever are in Canyon. You go to the grocery store and people stop—‘how’s your day going?’—and back home, you get too close to people and they give you a dirty look.”

‘My time was amazing’

Ruby is Jewish. Her parents told their daughter before arriving at WT to maybe not wear her faith on her sleeve, to perhaps be low key because who knows how it might be accepted in West Texas.

“People would ask me to church, and I’d say, “Sorry, but I don’t really do it like that,’” Ruby said. “A lot of girls were from Canyon and Amarillo and they would say, ‘You’re the first Jew I ever met.’

“I know we are not always the most beloved people in the world, and I didn’t know what kind of culture for that I was coming to. But everyone was so nice about it. They made special food for me on Jewish holidays. I cried. Everyone was so respectful.”

Softball kept getting better and better for the outfielder. The pandemic in 2020 limited WT to just 18 games, but Ruby led the conference with nine home runs. In the NCAA Division II national championship season of 2021, she hit .432 with 17 doubles, 12 home runs and 60 RBIs.

The 2022 season was a solid one, but the spring was marked as much for receiving her bachelor’s in health science and minor in psychology with a GPA of 3.6. With an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic, she played last season as a graduate student.

Ruby was an All-American for the third time on a 50-8 team in 2023. For their daughter’s final season, at least Mark or Sheila Salzman, often both, were at every home game. Throughout her career, they flew from California as often as time and money allowed.

Last spring, Salzman hit .391 with 23 home runs, 61 RBIs, and stole 18 bases in 22 attempts. She is among the top five all-time at WT in hits, runs, doubles, home runs, RBIs and total bases.

But her last season meant her time at WT was winding to an end. She continued online work to complete her master’s while returning to California in a new job as an administrative assistant at UCLA’s Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

The stationary work behind a desk made her realize, as an athlete, how much she missed constant movement. She’s seriously considering pursuing a path as a registered nurse in pediatrics. It’s an active family. Jacob, her twin and younger by 31 minutes, works for the U.S. Forestry Service near the Oregon border. Younger brother Shane is a deputy sheriff in Ventura County.

But first was tying the bow on her time at WT and the return to receive her master’s diploma. Salzman has been homesick for her second home. She followed her old softball team constantly from 1,075 miles away. She made Mother’s Day reservations for the X Bar Steakhouse, one of her old favorites, in March. There was a trip to Blue Sky for her favorite hamburger. And certainly, she came to see friends.

Ruby Salzman returned older, wiser, smarter, more worldly, and with an admiration not just for WT and her experience, but in herself for the will to take the road less traveled.

“I’m just grateful for my time there and the people who took a chance on me and got to know me,” she said. “My time was amazing. I miss it every day. I wish I could go back in time and relive it.

 

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jsbeilue@yahoo.com.

 

Top Photo: Ruby Salzman receives her graduate hood from Dr. Amjad Abdullat before then receiving her MBA degree in health care management from West Texas A&M University at a May 11 commencement ceremony in WT's First United Bank Center.