(Note: This story is by WPCI member Marion Garmel, who also wrote Ruth Chin’s bio for the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. Photo is by Janet Fry.)
Longtime Woman’s Press Club of Indiana member Ruth Chin, 97, died Oct. 1 in Muncie.
Chin was Indiana’s first female photojournalist and the first Chinese female photojournalist in the state. Born in 1924 in Chicago, she grew up in Muncie, where her parents owned the only Chinese restaurant in town. She started photographing at age 8, when her father bought her a camera. Much later she was asking how to use her new Speed Graphic in a camera store when a news photographer came in and mentioned the newspaper was looking for another photographer.
Never more than 5-feet, 2-inches tall, Ruth was the first woman to photograph an IHSAA state basketball championship game in Hinkle Fieldhouse. With an oversized camera hanging from her neck and an even larger bag of equipment dangling from her shoulder, she could not be missed.
“Actually, being a woman and a minority has been more beneficial than a hindrance,” she told reporter Janet Schneider for a story in the Indianapolis Star, “because you stand out like a sore thumb.”
She never had trouble getting through taller, usually male photographers, to photograph a parade or sports event. She later turned to freelancing and shot industrial and commercial work. She had her own studio, Ruth Chin Photography, in downtown Muncie. And when she realized on a camping trip, where she took her usual ton of photos, that she could write a story too and get paid for it, a career in travel writing was born.
Chin won many WPCI and National Federation of Press Women awards. In 1951, she was the first female to win the Bushemi Award, the top news photography award from Associated Press of Indiana. In 2014, she was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
Chin joined Woman’s Press Club of Indiana in 1962. She was Communicator of Achievement in 1975 and 1987; she won the Kate Milner Rabb Award in 1979; and she was president of WPCI from 1974 through 1976.
Chin was a great friend of legendary Indiana press woman Hortense Myers, and they often traveled together, camping in the wilderness. Following the Seattle NFPW convention in 1986, they traveled across Canada, camping, writing and photographing along the way until they dipped back into the United States and home to Indiana.
She also was a dedicated member of Altrusa Club, an international nonprofit service club.
Ruth Chin’s archives and other photographic materials are stored at Ball State University in Muncie.
Donations in memory of Ruth Chin may be made to the Woman’s Press Club of Indiana Education Fund, care of Julie Slaymaker, 5161 Washington Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46205.
