CHARLESTOWN — Ruth Bushway’s toe-tapping music brightened the mood for many in her hometown of Charlestown and surrounding communities.
A musician all her life, Bushway was a talented guitarist and singer who played with several bands before forming two country music bands with local musicians. They entertained at small area venues including nursing homes, senior centers, assisted-living complexes and at Old Home Days and Fourth of July celebrations.
“I don’t think a week went by when Ruth didn’t have a gig or two to go to, a nursing home or somewhere to sing,” said Margaret Johnson, a former president of the Charlestown Senior Center, where Bushway worked as secretary for a time. “She just loved her music and everybody loved Ruthie.”
Bushway was engaging and could delight audiences with humor that complemented her talent as a performer. She often wrote her own skits as part of her performance.
“Every year she did a Fourth of July show and would come out with the craziest things,” said Johnson, who served as president of the senior center from 2002 to 2017.
In one memorable skit, Bushway had the men dress as the Dixie Chicks with miniskirts and wigs, said her daughter Heidi Bushway, of West Chesterfield, N.H. She had someone else do an impersonation of the comedian Minnie Pearl.
“They traveled to Charlestown, Springfield, Claremont, Keene, Newport and just played for people who wanted to be entertained,” Heidi Bushway said. “And they never charged a cent. Went on their own expense. The residents thought they were wonderful. That was one of the most giving things she did.”
Ruth Bushway died at the age of 92 on Jan. 5, 2026 at Springfield Hospital where she was being treated for pneumonia.
Born on July 30, 1933 to Gordon and Ida Bashaw, Bushway lived her entire life in Charlestown. Her parents worked at a woolen mill in Claremont.
Music shaped Bushway’s upbringing from an early age.
“She grew up in a family where everyone played music,” Heidi Bushway said. “Her cousins played, her parents played.”
In high school, Bushway played the drums in the marching band. She never had formal lessons but learned to play piano and guitar with help from others and was a terrific singer, her daughter said.
Bushway graduated from the former Charlestown High School in 1951 and that year married Robert Bushway, whom she met at a local dance. They were together for 65 years before Robert, who played a 20-string steel guitar, died in 2016.
Bushway was always in a band since graduating high school, Heidi said. Early on it was drums with the Halsonaires and then guitar with The Echoes and The Tempos. Later, she formed her own country bands, Country Sunshine, with her husband, and finally Silver Country.
“She always sang ‘Crazy’ and everybody loved to hear it,” said Johnson about the Patsy Cline hit from the 1960s.
Bushway began playing rock ‘n’ roll, her daughter said, but would later switch to country.
She fit her music around her life as a wife and mother. Soon after they were married, Robert was drafted into the Army. Upon his return in 1954, Robert began a long career in construction management.
Bushway was a stay-at-home mother for Bruce, born in 1955 and Heidi, born two years later. Bruce died in 2013 at the age of 58 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia.
When her children were young, Bushway devoted much of her free time to volunteering.
“What I remember as a child, she was a Cub Scout den leader, a Brownie leader, a vacation Bible school director, a volunteer with the PTA and gave guitar lessons to kids and adults in town,” Heidi Bushway said. “She was just so full of energy and life and always wanted to be doing something for others.”
Music was a constant in their household growing up, her daughter recalled at a service for Bushway in January.
“Bruce and I fell asleep at night listening to the sweet sounds of Mom’s voice and Mom and Dad playing guitars,” Heidi Bushway said. “Mom had a lot of talent and love.”
When her children were older, Bushway worked outside the home in the office of several businesses and later showed some entrepreneurial talent selling cosmetics and jewelry, running a tanning salon in Keene, N.H., and operating a traveling hot dog stand going at craft fairs and flea markets for 17 years.
“I could not believe how active she was,” Bushway’s granddaughter, Kaya Starbuck of Claremont said. “She always had something to do or was going somewhere and played in multiple bands. She was very social and understanding and could be compatible with a lot of people.”
In later years, when she played at the senior center in Charlestown, Bushway loved to involve her audience.
“If you were a member of the center, you could be in the Silver Country group,” her daughter said.
Arnold Stoddard, 88, remembers first meeting Bushway in the 1960s at the Weathersfield Rod and Gun Club where Bushway performed and Stoddard called square dances on occasion. He later played bass guitar in Silver Country when he moved to Charlestown from Chester, Vt., about 16 years ago.
“We practiced every week and Ruth usually picked out the music,” said Stoddard, who remembers they all had to wear hats and western style clothing. “We played at the Friday night summer concerts every year. Anytime we played at a nursing home there was always a large crowd.”
Kendra Horne, of Springfield, Vt., got to know Bushway when she was an aide caring for Bushway’s husband, who had Parkinson’s Disease, when he lived at Springfield Health and Rehabilitation the final years of his life. Silver Country came to play once a month and it meant so much to the residents, Horne said.
“It gave her and the seniors something to look forward to instead of doing the same thing over and over,” Horne said.
What moved Horne was watching Bushway come to visit her husband every day for a year and a half, bringing CDs of their own music or other country singers to play for him and sing along. Sometimes she came in the afternoon and would stay through dinner.
“It was about more than her and her husband,” Horne said. “It was about anybody that was around her. She talked to other residents and got to know them. That was unusual. Most people come to visit their family member, then leave. She would invite people into her room. Everybody always got included.”
After Robert died, Horne said she worried her new friend, who always had a hug for her on visits to see her husband, would “die of a broken heart.” So one day Horne reached out to Bushway and they began having lunch together. When Bushway asked Horne to take her to Atlantic City, where she had gone with Robert for 40 years, Horne did not hesitate.
“It was a new beginning for me as well, having left a long relationship in New York,” said Horne, who today works at Historic Homes of Runnemede in Windsor. “She missed it and going for me was a new adventure. We did that for seven or eight years together.”
Whether playing before a few hundred people or spending a quiet Sunday afternoon with her granddaughter playing Upwards, a word-stacking board game, Bushway was always happy to share her talent and love.
“I don’t know if it was charisma or genuine caring for people or a little from column A and column B. But everyone she met, she touched. She was amazing,” her granddaughter, Starbuck, said.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.